Wireless networks are becoming more and more a part of our daily lives. The rise of what's known as Internet of Things (IoT) devices makes having a Wi-Fi network a necessity. These types of devices allow many pieces of equipment to be interconnected and controlled remotely. Even though this technology is undoubtedly becoming more popular among users for its efficiency, there are also some drawbacks with wireless routers and the other devices involved in a WiFi network, which mainly translate into high power consumption.
While manufacturers of tech devices like tablets, smartphones, and laptops work hard to make these products increasingly energy efficient, the devices that provide us with WiFi signal keep consuming large amounts of energy. For this reason, a group of engineers from the University of Seattle, United States, developed a new WiFi-based technology called Passive WiFi.
FullOffice Learning created this article to explain what Passive WiFi is all about and why it's starting to become popular. Basically, Passive WiFi came about with the idea of reducing energy consumption. This way we can connect our devices wirelessly without constantly draining the battery.
To explain what Passive WiFi is, the best approach is to compare it to classic WiFi. The regular WiFi we know in our daily lives connects two devices wirelessly. Both devices send and receive signal, so in both cases there needs to be enough power for that.
Passive WiFi, however, doesn't work the same way. In this case, only one device needs to send signals, since the other one has passive sensors. This is achieved by being able to separate the waves. In traditional WiFi, two types of waves are sent: a digital one, which transmits the data, and an analog one, which carries that data.
By implementing a Passive WiFi system, we're talking about energy savings of around 10,000 times less consumption compared to a standard wireless network. This requires new hardware to send and receive these packets of information.
Just to give an example of how low Passive WiFi's power consumption can be, we can point out that Bluetooth consumes a thousand times more energy than this type of WiFi, so it's even possible to think this technology could completely replace Bluetooth technology.
As for the transmission speed it can reach, it can go up to 11 Mb per second — a figure that may seem low, especially by modern standards, but we shouldn't forget this is a technology still in a development stage.