Nokia works on self-powering phone that 'harvests' energy
Published: 11 June, 2009
READ MORE: Nokia
Nokia has prototyped a cellphone that can power itself using only the ambient radio waves that permeate the atmosphere everywhere. This 'energy scavenging' technique has only been used in niche markets like RFID smart tags or the London Oyster transport swipe card, but the Finnish giant hopes to bring it into the consumer mainstream.
Markku Rouvala, a researcher from the Nokia Research Centre in Cambridge, UK, told the MIT Technology Review that ambient electromagnetic radiation - emitted from mobile antennas, TV masts and other sources - can be converted into enough electrical current to keep a phone battery topped up without additional charging.
The prototype on which the Cambridge team is working could harvest up to 50 milliwatts of power, enough to charge a phone in standby - current harvesting technologies only scavenge 3-5 milliwatts. The phone would have a wideband receiver to capture radiation across a wide range of spectrum and signals, between 500MHz and 10GHz. Rouvala believes commercial products featuring this approach to charging will come to market in three to four years' time.
The wireless transfer of energy was first demonstrated by Nikola Tesla in 1893. Earlier this year, researchers at Intel and the University of Washington in Seattle, used a TV signal 4.1 kilometers away to power a small sensor.
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