How New Mobile Devices Charge Themselves?

Photo: firstpost.com

   

It has happened to everyone at some time: Just when you were in the middle of an animated conversation with someone on your cellphone, the battery gave up its ghost and went dead on you. Cursing the phone or even yourself had not helped any, had it? It is precisely with this in mind that various entities have been trying to get the batteries recharge themselves.

UCLA Finds a Way

UCLA Materials Science Department has found a way to make cell phone batteries recharge themselves even if they are being used continuously. In fact, recharging will get progressively higher as the usage of phone gets higher and higher.

The Methodology

There are two polarized transparent sheets in the display of a smartphone. These sheets hold pixels or LCD molecules intact between them. When the phone gets switched on, the backlight becomes active. This backlight makes its way through the sheets and lights up the screen. 75% of the power is used up by the sheets in the process.

Nokia’s Solution

Nokia has come up with something that attempts to provide relief to Standby Mode in a cell phone which has always borne the brunt of accusers who berate it for draining energy in cell phones. A phone left in standby mode can recharges itself, according to Nokia.


Using Radio Waves

Ambient radio waves transmitted by TV and radio stations and signals from mobile phones are present everywhere in the atmosphere. These waves possess energy in very small quantities but Nokia has found a way to channelize this energy to recharge mobile phones when they are left in standby mode. This feat has been achieved by Nokia Research Centre, Cambridge, UK.

New Idea? Not at all

The idea is not exactly new. Radio waves are used to power Radio Frequency Identification tags used in shipping already. Nokia, instead of harvesting the energy in the surrounding area, which would only be a few microwatts anyway, aims to draw in more power from signals miles away; it can draw power in the range of a thousand microwatts. Energy drawn from each individual signal will be insignificant but when numerous sources are added together, it will be sufficient for the phone to get recharged by itself.

Back to the Future

Going back some 12 decades, idea of transfer of energy sans wires was first put forward by Nicola Tesla in as early as 1893. He wanted to send power to the U.S. through wireless means. Nokia, perhaps, had taken inspiration from him; it has built a couple of simple circuits and a wide-band antenna to receive energy from frequencies ranging from 500 megahertz to 10 gigahertz. The radio waves will be converted into electric current by one circuit and the other will offer this current to the battery to recharge itself.

Increasing Energy Levels

One obvious impediment one faces here is that the power drawn from radio signals has to be higher than the power used to operate the device. Even 20 milliwatts which is possible now may not be enough to use the phone for calls though it can indeed be in standby mode without losing power. The company hopes to harvest around 50 milliwatts in order to keep the battery charged full at all times.



Written By: Jeremy Stark is the online admin for RouletteChatSites and manages their reputation management also. Besides working as a rep manager and admin, he also looks after their online branding and content development team.