1. Transiently Powered Computers
KIVI Chair - Big Data Science Master Class
Transiently Powered Computers
dr. Przemysław Pawełczak
10 November 2016

2. Acknowledgments TU Delft Team University of Washnington Team
Henko Aantjes (MSc graduate)
Jethro Tan (MSc graduate)
Amjad Majid (PhD student)
Sinan Yildirim (Postdoc)
University of Washnington Team
Aaron Parks (PhD student)

3. What is the Source of Big Data?
Internet of Things is a huge data generator!
Big data + IoT = power-marriage
Oracle
By 2020 Internet of Things will generate a 4.4 trillion GB of data worldwide
Topic of intensive study
Example: EDX Courses on Data Analytics for the IoT

4. What is the IoT Node?
Sensing
Computation
Communication
Sensor
Microcontroller
Transceiver
Power

5. Powering the IoT Powering cyber-physical systems is a challenge
By 2025: >100 billion IoT devices
sustainable operation
large-scale deployment
Batteries
increase weight and cost of the hardware
replenishment is generally impractical
ecological footprint
Transfer of electromagnetic energy
From a power source to receiver devices over the air
Wireless Power Transfer
Iris Mote

6. Powering [IoT] Devices Remotely (1)
Non-radiative techniques
Either inductive or magnetic resonant coupling
Varying magnetic flux induces current
Transfer power over short distances N S
Receiver
Source

7. Powering [IoT] Devices Remotely (2)
Radiative techniques
Electric field of the electromagnetic waves
radio frequency (RF) waves as an energy delivery medium
transfer power over longer distances
provision of energy to many receivers simultaneously
broadcast nature
low complexity/size/cost for the energy receiver hardware
suitability for mobility
charge low-power embedded devices
RFID (Radio Frequency Identification) tags
chip
antenna

8. RF-Powered Computing
A new class of low-power battery-less embedded systems
Intermittently Powered Devices (IPDs)
Most widespread: Computational RFIDs (CRFIDs)
Allow sensing and computation and communication
Without batteries!
Design
Charge a super capacitor using harvested (RF) energy
Equipped with a backscatter radio
Simple circuitry for the receiver

9. RF-Powered Computing Hardware - System
RFID reader
Antenna
WISP

10. RF-Powered Computing Hardware - Tag

11. Example Application: WISPCam
Naderiparizi et al. "Wispcam: A battery-free RFID camera" in Proc. IEEE RFID 2015

12. Example Application: Ambient Backscatter
Traditional backscatter (e.g. in RFID)
Device communicates by modulating its reflections of an incident RF signal
No generation of radio waves
Ambient backscatter
Communicate using ambient RF signals as the only source of power
Ambient RF from TV and cellular communications
Liu et al. “Ambient Backscatter: Wireless Communication Out of Thin Air “ in Proc. ACM SIGCOMM 2013