SBIR-STTR Award

The broader impact/commercial potential of this project is to enable Wi-Fi and other radio transmissions at up to 10000 times lower power than has been possible. The technique for the first time can generate Wi-Fi and other radio transmissions using backscatter communication, for orders of magnitude lower power than conventional techniques. These backscatter transmissions can be decoded on conventional Wi-Fi Access Points, phones, and other devices. Given the increasing interest in the Internet-of-Things where small computing devices are embedded in everyday objects and environments, improving the energy efficiency of communication by up to 10,000 times will substantially extend battery life. As a result, this project would make the Internet of things more viable economically and environmentally, since batteries will travel to landfills at a slower rate. Economically, reducing or eliminating batteries from pervasive sensors will lead to growth in the semiconductor industry, and also in other businesses, which will be able to allow their customers to search the physical world, thanks to the new sources of data about the physical world. This Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Phase I project introduces the key insight that the power-hungry, high-frequency analog and RF components found in battery-powered radios can be grouped together into a wall-powered device called the helper node. The energy constrained, battery-powered mobile/embedded endpoint device contains only low frequency and mostly digital components, making its power consumption negligible. The mobile devices transmit data by reflecting RF signals generated by the helper. This novel partitioning of the radio system allows the Endpoint to communicate far more efficiently than was possible with active radio techniques. This project aims to create a complete network stack that enables passive devices to coexist with conventional active devices in the ISM band. The system consists of ultra-low energy endpoint sensors, wall-powered helper devices, and commercial off the shelf active radio routers. The project involves building working networking hardware, designing and implementing a network stack matched to the project?s unique needs, and testing the resulting system with real customers. If successful, the project will have delivered the critical enabling technology for the vision of pervasively connected devices with billions of devices connected to the Internet without the need to replace batteries.

The broader impact/commercial potential of this project is to develop low-power, low-cost and smallform factor wireless connectivity solutions, facilitating the deployment of inexpensive and long-livedwireless sensors and devices for a diverse set of applications. For instance, it is infeasible to placeconventional sensors or wireless connectivity on low-cost or disposable items due to the high cost andshort battery life of wireless communication devices. With the successful completion of this project,items ranging from consumer packaged goods to medical consumables and pill bottles could beconnected to the Internet. Brands and manufacturers could gain previously inaccessible market andproduct insights based on the way products are used, while consumers could enjoy benefits rangingfrom new services and features (such as automated product reordering) to better-designed productswhich more closely fit their needs. By enabling new use cases for wireless connectivity, this technologycan prompt innovation across many industries.This Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Phase II project introduces a new long-rangebackscatter-based communication technology based on Chirp Spread Spectrum, a wireless protocolwhich can be detected at extremely low signal levels. The low-power wireless system prior to thisproject is comprised of three elements: A passive backscatter-based radio, a first gateway device whichprovides an illumination signal, and a second gateway device which receives the resultingbackscattered data and forwards data to the Internet. In this project, the passive backscatter-basedradio will be implemented in an integrated circuit form, realizing the low power and low cost possiblewith this technology. The two gateway devices will be combined into one full-duplex radio device, toaddress the needs of the majority of deployment scenarios. Techniques to localize the backscatterradios within the field of the gateway device will be explored. Finally, security challenges will beaddressed and the system will undergo extensive evaluation and testing.