AMHERST – UMass researchers are working on a new radio technology that allows small mobile devices to take advantage of battery power in larger devices nearby.
Professor Deepak Ganesan and his graduate students in the College of Information and Computer Sciences designed and are testing a prototype radio that could help to extend the life of batteries in small, mass-market mobile devices like fitness trackers and smartwatches. They hope using “energy offload” techniques may help to make these devices smaller and lighter in the future.
Ganesan and colleagues have dubbed the new technology Braidio for “braid of radios,” and say it can extend battery life hundreds of times, in some cases.
As he explains, battery size in portable devices is proportional to the device size. However, these devices can’t take advantage of the differences. For example, Ganesan says, “the battery on your smart watch cannot survive longer by taking advantage of the higher battery level on your smartphone.”
In a paper presented at a recent conference, the researchers show that they have designed a radio that has the ability to tap energy of larger devices nearby.
Braidio operates like a standard Bluetooth radio when a device has sufficient energy, but operates like Radio-Frequency Identification tags when energy is low, offloading energy use to a device with a larger battery when needed. So, when a smartwatch and smartphone are equipped with Braidios, they can work together to proportionally share the energy consumed for communication, they explain.
Braidio test results show that when a device with a small battery is transmitting to a device with a large battery, Braidio can offer roughly 400 times longer battery life than Bluetooth, since the smaller device’s battery is preserved longer.
“Wearable devices are often bulky due to large batteries needed for adequate battery life,” Ganesan said.
“Perhaps such energy offload techniques can reverse this trend and enable thinner and lighter devices.”