Cutting the last wires for mobile communications by microwave power transfer

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Ultra-wideband antennas

The focus of UWB antenna research activity has matured in recent years and currently mainly concentrates on applications such as biomedicine and security. Early UWB antenna designs were driven by the FCC allocation of spectrum in 2002 and focussed on obtaining wide impedance bandwidths with reasonable group delay characteristics. Many of these were simple planar monopoles antennas with canonical geometries. The emergence of new applications channelled the emphasis towards miniaturisation and integration into devices. This required optimisation of the antenna geometries to ensure that good system performance is achieved from the integrated antenna. Many optimisation techniques are available including the spline technique to generate the outline of the antenna element and ground plane. Simple methods based on genetic algorithms are employed and evolutionary algorithms which are capable of optimising for multiple goals are beneficial when multiple antenna parameters are simultaneously investigated. These techniques have proven advantageous especially when time-domain performance is critical and provide solutions for both single-ended and differential feed arrangements. The main applications using UWB channels in the 3.1 GHz −10.6 GHz spectrum are localization and tracking applications, mainly employing impulse radio UWB imaging, and generally using linear polarization. However circularly-polarized UWB antennas have been developed, both directional and omnidirectional and are being investigated across various systems

A critical analysis of research potential, challenges and future directives in industrial wireless sensor networks

In recent years, Industrial Wireless Sensor Networks (IWSNs) have emerged as an important research theme with applications spanning a wide range of industries including automation, monitoring, process control, feedback systems and automotive. Wide scope of IWSNs applications ranging from small production units, large oil and gas industries to nuclear fission control, enables a fast-paced research in this field. Though IWSNs offer advantages of low cost, flexibility, scalability, self-healing, easy deployment and reformation, yet they pose certain limitations on available potential and introduce challenges on multiple fronts due to their susceptibility to highly complex and uncertain industrial environments. In this paper a detailed discussion on design objectives, challenges and solutions, for IWSNs, are presented. A careful evaluation of industrial systems, deadlines and possible hazards in industrial atmosphere are discussed. The paper also presents a thorough review of the existing standards and industrial protocols and gives a critical evaluation of potential of these standards and protocols along with a detailed discussion on available hardware platforms, specific industrial energy harvesting techniques and their capabilities. The paper lists main service providers for IWSNs solutions and gives insight of future trends and research gaps in the field of IWSNs

Optimization techniques for reliable data communication in multi-antenna wireless systems

This thesis looks at new methods of achieving reliable data communication in wireless communication systems using different antenna transmission optimization methods. In particular, the problems of exploitation of MIMO communication channel diversity, secure downlink beamforming techniques, adaptive beamforming techniques, resource allocation methods, simultaneous power and information transfer and energy harvesting within the context of multi-antenna wireless systems are addressed

Roadmap on energy harvesting materials

Ambient energy harvesting has great potential to contribute to sustainable development and address growing environmental challenges. Converting waste energy from energy-intensive processes and systems (e.g. combustion engines and furnaces) is crucial to reducing their environmental impact and achieving net-zero emissions. Compact energy harvesters will also be key to powering the exponentially growing smart devices ecosystem that is part of the Internet of Things, thus enabling futuristic applications that can improve our quality of life (e.g. smart homes, smart cities, smart manufacturing, and smart healthcare). To achieve these goals, innovative materials are needed to efficiently convert ambient energy into electricity through various physical mechanisms, such as the photovoltaic effect, thermoelectricity, piezoelectricity, triboelectricity, and radiofrequency wireless power transfer. By bringing together the perspectives of experts in various types of energy harvesting materials, this Roadmap provides extensive insights into recent advances and present challenges in the field. Additionally, the Roadmap analyses the key performance metrics of these technologies in relation to their ultimate energy conversion limits. Building on these insights, the Roadmap outlines promising directions for future research to fully harness the potential of energy harvesting materials for green energy anytime, anywhere

Energy Harvesters and Self-powered Sensors for Smart Electronics

This book is a printed edition of the Special Issue “Energy Harvesters and Self-Powered Sensors for Smart Electronics” that was published in Micromachines, which showcases the rapid development of various energy harvesting technologies and novel devices. In the current 5G and Internet of Things (IoT) era, energy demand for numerous and widely distributed IoT nodes has greatly driven the innovation of various energy harvesting technologies, providing key functionalities as energy harvesters (i.e., sustainable power supplies) and/or self-powered sensors for diverse IoT systems. Accordingly, this book includes one editorial and nine research articles to explore different aspects of energy harvesting technologies such as electromagnetic energy harvesters, piezoelectric energy harvesters, and hybrid energy harvesters. The mechanism design, structural optimization, performance improvement, and a wide range of energy harvesting and self-powered monitoring applications have been involved. This book can serve as a guidance for researchers and students who would like to know more about the device design, optimization, and applications of different energy harvesting technologies

The Largest Unethical Medical Experiment in Human History

This monograph describes the largest unethical medical experiment in human history: the implementation and operation of non-ionizing non-visible EMF radiation (hereafter called wireless radiation) infrastructure for communications, surveillance, weaponry, and other applications. It is unethical because it violates the key ethical medical experiment requirement for “informed consent” by the overwhelming majority of the participants. The monograph provides background on unethical medical research/experimentation, and frames the implementation of wireless radiation within that context. The monograph then identifies a wide spectrum of adverse effects of wireless radiation as reported in the premier biomedical literature for over seven decades. Even though many of these reported adverse effects are extremely severe, the true extent of their severity has been grossly underestimated. Most of the reported laboratory experiments that produced these effects are not reflective of the real-life environment in which wireless radiation operates. Many experiments do not include pulsing and modulation of the carrier signal, and most do not account for synergistic effects of other toxic stimuli acting in concert with the wireless radiation. These two additions greatly exacerbate the severity of the adverse effects from wireless radiation, and their neglect in current (and past) experimentation results in substantial under-estimation of the breadth and severity of adverse effects to be expected in a real-life situation. This lack of credible safety testing, combined with depriving the public of the opportunity to provide informed consent, contextualizes the wireless radiation infrastructure operation as an unethical medical experiment

Supercapacitors for the Next Generation

Supercapacitors are presently applied in various devices and have the potential to be used in many fields in the future. For example, the use of supercapacitors is currently limited not only to automobiles, buses, and trucks, which have been electrified recently, but also to railways and aircraft. We believe that these devices are the most suitable physical batteries for absorbing regenerative energy produced during motor regeneration; thus, further research and development in this direction is expected in the future