Charging your phone...without wires?

Nokia has come up with technology that converts radio signals into electricity, and at the moment it's just enough to keep your phone from going dead.  A fantastic idea, and I'm surprised it took this long to figure out.  After all, we've been converting electrical energy into radio waves for over 100 years.

While "traditional" (if there is such a thing) wireless power systems are specifically designed with a transmitter and receiver in mind, Nokia's system isn't finicky about where it gets its wireless waves. TV, radio, other mobile phone systems -- all of this stuff just bounces around the air and most of it is wasted, absorbed into the environment or scattered into the ether. Nokia picks up all the bits and pieces of these waves and uses the collected electromagnetic energy to create electrical current, then uses that to recharge the phone's battery. A huge range of frequencies can be utilized by the system (there's no other way, really, as the energy in any given wave is infinitesimal). It's the same idea that Tesla was exploring 100 years ago, just on a tiny scale.

Right now they're only able to pull 5 milliwatts of power from the air but that will improve over time.  Estimates are that the technology will be available to the consumer in three to five years.

Can't wait until they figure out how to power an electric car in the same manner.

Posted Jun 17 2009, 08:17 AM by Jody Farr
Filed under: ,

Comments

regis wrote re: Charging your phone...without wires?
on Wed, Jun 17 2009 2:45 PM

Two things come to mind.

Didn't Tesla have a scheme to transmit electricity through the air about a century ago, and actually began such a project, only to have  the financing fall through?

and:

With all the cellphones, wi-fi, satellite signals, etc. permeating the space we live in, have there been any studies done on the effects of our health due to being bombarded with microwaves from a zillion sources at once?

Ok, three things. Sorry, but:

The signals the Nokia is sucking up--could the be someone else's cellphone signal, which might not now get through?

Go ahead, call me paranoid.

regis wrote re: Charging your phone...without wires?
on Wed, Jun 17 2009 2:48 PM

Ok--I just reread your post and realized you had mentioned Tesla. My bad.

Jody Farr wrote re: Charging your phone...without wires?
on Wed, Jun 17 2009 2:52 PM

Good questions, Regis.  The article I quoted does go on to mention Tesla's work in this area, albeit briefly.  I had to do some Googling to remind myself about that.

As for whether the RF that we're hit with all day is a health hazard, the FCC has done quite a lot of research on what level of exposure to RF is unhealthy.  Here's a good primer on what resource for that info.

www.dailywireless.com/.../health-hazards-of-a-wireless-world-030507

Your third question about whether someone else's signal will be absorbed is intriguing.  However, I'm not sure that's the case because the radio isn't removing the signal from the air.  It's just receiving it and then converting it to electricity, probably in a manner similar to how a crystal radio operates.  But don't quote me on that...I could be way off.