NASA Working on Low-Power Chips for Wearables With Three Times Data Rate of Wi-Fi
NASA is working on microchips for wearable devices that reflect wireless signals instead of using transmitters and receivers, reducing the amount of power required before recharging. The technology, developed by Adrian Tang, strategic technology researcher-NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena,…
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California, and Frank Chang, engineering professor, University of California-Los Angeles, transmits information up to three times faster than standard Wi-Fi, said NASA. "The idea is if the wearable device only needs to reflect the Wi-Fi signal from a router or cell tower, instead of generate it, the power consumption can go way down (and the battery life can go way up)," Tang said in the release. Chang and Tang devised a simple switch mechanism that uses little power and allows the fast transfer of information between a wearable device and a computer, smart phone or tablet. They overcame the challenge of other objects in a room that reflect signals by developing a wireless chip that constantly senses and suppresses background reflections, enabling the wearable’s chip to differentiate between the real Wi-Fi signal and the reflection from the background. In testing, the system achieved a data transfer rate of 330 Mbps at about 8 feet, tripling that of the current Wi-Fi rate, they said, while using about 1,000 times less power than a Wi-Fi link. "You can send a video in a couple of seconds, but you don't consume the energy of the wearable device,” said Chang. Applications for the technology include medicine where wearables, used to monitor vital signs such as blood pressure and heart rhythm, could detect problems early, save lives and avoid costly hospital admissions, they said.