The researchers developed a what they call "between scattering (interscatter) communication" technology, can bring limited power equipment such as medical implant devices and other devices through standard wi-fi communication's ability to "talk".

Washington University, University of Washington) the researchers developed a kind of what they call "communication between scattering (interscatter)" technology, the backscattering (backscatter) or reflection (reflect) like bluetooth and other existing signal in the air, the wireless transmission by some techniques into another; Electrical engineering and computer science at the university of Washington team, also for the first time shows how bluetooth transmission can be used to establish a compatible wi-fi and ZigBee signal.

That is to say, this technology can bring limited power equipment such as medical implant devices and other devices through standard wi-fi communication's ability to "talk". The paper's co-author, doctoral student of electronic engineering at the university of Washington Vikram Iyer said, you can imagine what such as smart card or brain implants or contact lenses tiny size of the device: "they can't use a bluetooth or wi-fi chips, because will consume too much power in producing their own radio signal."

Communication between scattering and the so-called "" does not need to produce their own radio signal, those between scattering device can transmit the neighboring devices such as watch the wisdom of the wireless signal" recycling "; Iyer explained: "we make watches like wisdom, smart phones and other devices to do larger work produces radio signal power consumption, and low power of contact lenses, implanted devices, or credit card, etc., can be in a will of their own data coding methods to the reflected signals."

Iyer added that the element scattering between radio transmission is not normal, is only a link to the antenna switch (switch) : "opening and closing the switch, we can change the way that the antenna reflected energy; as long as through the switch to the correct rate (rate), our scattering between components can be reflected by the bluetooth signal device, such as wisdom watch to make it look like a mobile phone to receive wi-fi packet."

Innovative technology gives small device wi-fi communication function 0

"Between scattering" communication can use everyday action unit produce a low-power wi-fi transmission; Such as in the figure from wisdom (left) watches the bluetooth signal, brain implants (right) through the wi-fi transmit data to the smartphone

(source: Mark Stone, at the university of Washington)

For example, the team demonstrated using wisdom watch a bluetooth signal transmission to the equipped with the wisdom of the antenna contact lenses, in order to make a piece of new information we can write "white board", the university of Washington team developed a way to make the bluetooth transmission can be further manipulation and transformation of "single frequency (single tone)" signal. The single frequency signal through the backscattering, contact lenses can be data encoding (health information collected, for example) to the smartphone, tablet or laptop can be read standard wi-fi packet.

For implantable medical devices, to maintain battery life is essential; "If you implants with radio will soon consume battery power, may have surgery to change the battery;" Lyer said: "and your contact lenses is so small that, if equipped with micro cells even I'm afraid not enough to supply general wi-fi or bluetooth chips needed power." He pointed out that between the scattering can let those implants have wi-fi, and electricity is needed for the one over ten thousand of the common wi-fi chips.

Let implants can "speak"

Many implants can transmit messages so far, because of their size and put in the body, can't use wi-fi to transmit data to a smartphone or other mobile device; Iyer said, giving the implantable devices the ability to communicate with other devices: "can change the way we manage chronic diseases; for example, contact lenses can be used to tear through monitoring of patients with diabetes blood sugar levels, and send a notification when blood sugar levels to reduce to a phone."

When asked why the team choose bluetooth reflected signals, Iyer's answer: "because the bluetooth are widely used in mobile devices, the FSK (frequency shift keying) communication protocol, makes it easy to use technology into our wi-fi;" He added: "we believe that the bluetooth into wi-fi is cool, because of the high data transfer rate of the latter. We also confirmed that can use the same technique make bluetooth ZigBee, or even a different bluetooth packet."

To overcome the challenges

In the process of developing the communication technology, the university of Washington team also encounter some challenges; Including backward scattering process can produce unwanted signal image replication, therefore consumes more bandwidth, replication and the image interference between wi-fi access networks. But the team has developed a called the backward scattering field of SSB (single sideband backscatter) "technology, avoiding by-product who don't want to.

Innovative technology gives small device wi-fi communication function 1

Between the university of Washington, "scattering" communication technology research and development team members, respectively, a doctoral student of electronic engineering Bryce Kellogg (left), department of electronic engineering doctoral Vikram Iyer (right), and computer science and engineering research assistant both Vamsi Talla (in); There are two other members Shyam Gollakota and Joshua Smith (does not appear in the photo)

(source: Mark Stone, at the university of Washington)

Paper co-author, electronic engineering doctoral student at the university of Washington Bryce Kellogg said: "that means we can only use like wi-fi network bandwidth, and still can let other wi-fi network operation, will not produce interference." Team set up three concepts for previously not feasible application validation sample, including can communicate directly with the smartphone, wisdom, watches the wisdom of the contact lenses, implantable neural record device (implantable neural recording device).