connections WiFi are currently quite high energy consumers, and that is why most smartphone manufacturers think of their operating systems so that when the screen of a smartphone closes, WiFi connections are automatically interrupted and restarted for short periods of time at certain intervals.
Because this technology can be improved, researchers at the University of Washington have developed a technology called passive WiFi, passive WiFi, she consuming with de up to 10.000 times less energy than the standard WiFi version.
Passive WiFi uses up to 10.000 times less energy not only than standard WiFi, but also than Bluetooth LE, the new standard being able to transmit signals at 11 Mbps, so it would be a perfect replacement for Bluetooth, but not for normal WiFi which has much higher transfer speeds.
In order to obtain such a low energy consumption, the passive WiFi has decoupled the digital and analog operations involved in radio wave transmission, a single device in the network connected to an energy source having assigned the analog transmission functions.
All the networking, heavy-lifting and power-consuming pieces are done by the one plugged-in device. The passive devices are only reflecting to generate the Wi-Fi packets, which is a really energy-efficient way to communicate. Even though so many homes already have Wi-Fi, it hasn't been the best choice for thatt.
According to the researchers, passive WiFi works at distances of up to 30 meters from the router, but there are currently no details regarding the signal strength in the case of use in houses or various other locations with thick walls, so it remains to be seen how could manage.
Passive WiFi technology is mainly intended for gadgets dedicated to smart homes, which can communicate with mobile terminals at much greater distances than normal and all without consuming a lot of energy in this process.
Now that we can achieve Wi-Fi for tens of microwatts of power and can do much better than both Bluetooth and ZigBee, you could now imagine using Wi-Fi for everything.
Unfortunately, the new technology is currently in the development process and no one knows when or if it will reach the market.
