Radio wave recycling technique allows for mobile battery life boost
Wednesday, June 3, 2015 - 15:01:24
A new way of making smartphone batteries last longer has been discovered by researchers at Ohio State University in the US, with experts claiming that the amount of time a cell lasts on a single charge can increase by almost a third, according to IBT.
This battery life boost is achieved by recycling the radio signals that are emitted by the device as part of its normal operation. And the best part is that this technology can be retrofitted to almost any phone, adding minimal weight and costing just £65.
Project lead, Professor Chi-Chih Chen, said that mobile phones waste a lot of energy when they communicate with the nearest cellular mast or wireless hotspot, meaning that there was an opportunity to recapture what might normally go to waste and channel it into the battery to be reused again.
The vast majority of the signals emitted by mobile phones are lost in the ether. This is a necessary inefficiency of the connectivity process as they attempt to triangulate themselves and work out which network mast is closest to them at any given time. And while recapturing every radio signal emitted is difficult, the system developed by researchers manages to convert them to a direct current, which is capable of charging up the battery.
Of course, there could be signal issues if the device interfered too much, but the team believe that they have struck the right balance.
At the moment, the recycling of radio waves to provide additional power for smartphone batteries is in the early stages of development but crowd funding efforts are planned to be put underway soon. And so, this could eventually become the next big mobile phone accessory that everyone is attempting to snap up for their handset.
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