Low-power radio links

Article By:

Apsel, Alyssa B. School of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Cornell University, Ithaca, New York.

Dokania, Rajeev K. School of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Cornell University, Ithaca, New York.

Wang, Xiao School of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Cornell University, Ithaca, New York.

Last reviewed:2011

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1036/1097-8542.YB110171

The communication of information between places where a permanent infrastructure, such as wires, power grids, and cellular towers, is absent has become increasingly important. Recent advances in medicine, environmental sensing, and low-power computing have created a need for ways to transmit and receive data without such an infrastructure, particularly in critical locations such as in and around the human body, throughout the fuselage of an airplane, or from the inside of a collapsed building. These types of applications put a heavy burden on the radio links to operate with very little support and to be very small while remaining robust. For instance, a radio intended for implantation in the human body should either run for many years on a single battery or be able to harvest power from the environment, since battery replacement is likely to require surgery. Similar limits exist on other applications, where the cost of a battery in weight and size can be large compared to the cost of electronics. Conventional radio links, such as Bluetooth, require large batteries and often have lifetimes measured in hours or days rather than months or years. Overcoming these limitations requires changing the way wireless information is transmitted and received, especially for applications in which the information communicated may be sparse.

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