Stanford researchers develop new method for waking up small electronic devices.
A device that’s turned off doesn’t suck battery life, but it also doesn’t work. Now a low-power system that’s always on the alert can turn devices on when they are needed, saving energy in the networked internet of things.
As smartphone users know all too well, a sleeping device can still suck the life out of a battery. One solution for extending the battery life of wireless devices under development by researchers at Stanford University is to add a wake-up receiver that can turn on a shut-off device at a moment’s notice.
This wake-up receiver has many potential applications, particularly in designing the next generation of networked devices, including so-called “smart” devices that can communicate directly with one another without human intervention.
In order to miniaturize the wake-up receiver and drive down the amount of power it consumes, the researchers made use of the highly sensitive ultrasonic transducers provided by the Khuri-Yakub lab at Stanford, which convert analog sound input to electrical signals.
News Source: https://news.stanford.edu/press-releases/2018/02/12/new-method-waking-devices/
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