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Imagine a life without wires and without all the entangles of wires that we face time and again, most of us would have gone through a situation where we had to plug in multiple devices like Mobile phones, Fitness Bands, Laptops, etc. Using just a single extension box, this would ultimately end in a tangled mess of wires, what if you could power all your gadgets without wires, not just the gadgets imagine a life of electronics without electrical wires that would be really great, isn’t it?
Welcome to Wireless Power Transmission – a technology that is at our doorstep.
Well, the idea of wireless power transmission is not new but dates back to the 19th Century when Nikola Tesla the famous scientist who is best known for his invention of Alternate Current (AC) and his rivalry with Thomas Edison. In 1901 Nikola Tesla built a Wardenclyffe Tower that was capable of wireless power transmission.
Wireless Transmission of power uses an electromagnetic field of a certain frequency as a medium of transfer, this frequency depends on a range of transmission in order to transmit power wirelessly a source and a receiver is required, Both the source and the receiver must be in resonance condition that is natural frequencies of the two systems must match, a Transmitter coil powered by an electric source produces a magnetic field around when a second coil which is connected to the receiver is introduced in the same field with the same resonant frequency electric current flows through it, you must have heard about the principle that’s called Electromagnetic Induction.
In simpler terms, a coiled wire in a charging pad turns electric current into a magnetic field then that field is received by another coiled wire in your device and turns it back into electricity and charges the battery, but most of the inductive charging devices today require direct or close contact between the device being charged and the source of the magnetic field.
The New generation Scientists are looking for new ways to extend the distance of Magnetic Induction through one or the other technologies, here we bring to you information on companies which are leading the wireless power transmission industry.
- Witricity
Witricity which was founded in 2007 by a professor at MIT, it is a combination of two words wireless and electricity, they specialize in wireless energy transmission in electrical vehicle charging cars without wires, it works in an identical way to the wireless cell phone charger which you might already own but just on a bigger scale you might have observed how you can lift your phone very slightly off its charger without stopping the flow of electricity.
- Powercast
Powercast was launched into the market in 2007 at Consumer Electronics show (CES-2007) is considered one of the pioneers of long-range, power-over-distance wireless charging technology through broadcasted RF energy (radio waves) which is converted into DC power. Powercast's technology allows energy harvesting from RF energy as soon as the antenna is attached the device begin collecting energy from radio waves, The energy in the hardware provided by the company is stored in capacitors on the evaluation board and when they charge sufficiently the DC boost converter turns on and supplies a host microcontroller with 3.3 volts direct current.
- Sonic Energy –
Sonic Energy was founded by Meredith Perry in 2011 at the time she was a student at the University of Pennsylvania. Sonic Energy uses Ultrasonic Transducer arrays to convert electrical energy into acoustic energy, later it transmits the energy through the air in a tightly focused beam, to give power to all the electronic which are placed tens of feet away, The company currently makes on-demand power to Industrial IOT's, Consumer Electronics, Aerospace industry, medical, agricultural and Automotive Industries.
4) Ossia
- Ossia was founded in 2008 by American physicist and technologist Hatem Zeine, his technology is named Cota, it can charge control and interact with many devices that we already use in our daily life, its system consists of two components a power transmitter and a power receiver which is generally embedded inside a mobile or a fixed device that needs wireless power which otherwise would require a battery to be powered. The receiver device sends out a low power omnidirectional beacon, the transmitter captures the beacon that is bounced all over the room and decodes the location of the receiver by computing the phase of all the incident waves, the transmitter than computes the complex conjugate of all the incident waves and then transmits a higher power reflection of the beacon back to the receiver, all the individual power waves bounce off the same surfaces in the room and converge upon the receiver at a power level of up to 1 watt, the process is repeated 100 times per second to track moving receivers.
