Never a dull moment. Technology never stops evolving, thanks to dedicated innovators from all over the world. Now, here’s something that could make Nikola Tesla’s dream a reality: Wi-Fi powered electronics. In this era, we’re surrounded by Wi-Fi almost everywhere we go  – local area networking technology allows electronic devices to connect to the network. However, some raised the question: are we using this technology to its full potential? Every time I think of Wi-Fi, my subconscious shares a second with Nikola Tesla, the man who was keen on making wires redundant. Researchers at the University of Washington wish to fulfill Tesla’s dream with PoWiFi. The engineers released a new type of technology that uses a Wi-Fi router—a source of ubiquitous, but untapped energy in indoor environments—to power devices. This new system, dubbed Power Over Wi-Fi (PoWiFi), is one of the most innovative technologies of the year—Popular Science included it in the annual “Best of What’s New” awards. The researchers recently published a paper that shows how they managed to harvest energy from Wi-Fi signals and then to power a simple temperature sensor, a low-resolution grayscale camera, and a charger for a Jawbone activity tracking bracelet. The final paper will be presented next month at the Association for Computing Machinery’s CoNEXT 2015 conference in Germany, on emerging networking experiments and technologies. “For the first time we’ve shown that you can use Wi-Fi devices to power the sensors in cameras and other devices,” said lead author Vamsi Talla, a UW electrical engineering doctoral student. “We also made a system that can co-exist as a Wi-Fi router and a power source—it doesn’t degrade the quality of your Wi-Fi signals while it’s powering devices.” What this means is that electricity flows wirelessly through the air, but don’t...

Wi-Fi Calling has never been a priority for carriers with good cellular service. However, following the recent announcement that iPhones will support Wi-Fi Calling through iOS8, and that T-Mobile is already on board, the rest of the carriers have somewhat been forced to rethink their plans for this service. The terminology might be confusing, what does Wi-Fi Calling mean exactly? This nifty sounding technology uses your home Wi-Fi to make calls and send texts over the internet. It allows cellular packets from your phone to be transferred to your carrier over the internet, and reintroduces them into the cellular network, much like beaming over the air. It differs from Google Hangouts and Skype – these let you talk to other people by using call forwarding or some internet-based interface – Wi-Fi Calling allows you to use your actual carrier phone number over the internet. It differs from VoIP technology which lets you use an internet-connected phone just as you’d use a landline, transferring your voice over the internet to the switched telephone network – the Wi-Fi Calling technology drops the cell towers path, connecting your voice to your mobile carrier’s network using the internet. One of the advantages of this system is that it can help you conserve plan minutes and texts, as the calls that are made over Wi-Fi don’t count against your plan. Moreover, it enables you to make calls using your phone number even when your network cuts out or when you’re outside your coverage area. Wi-Fi Calling is not a new idea – smaller providers like Republic Wireless have been offering the service for quite some time – but Apple’s announcement may be forcing everyone by emphasizing the technology and launching it before the rest are ready to go. At...

A new mobile technology has appeared approximately every decade since the first 1G system was introduced in 1981; 2G networks were made public in 1992, 3G rolled out in 2001, and 4G systems were standardized in 2012. Today, most of the world is rolling out 4G networks, but the Koreans are pushing for 5G mobile communications technology. They say it will be delivered to consumers by 2020. Samsung Electronics announced the successful outcome of their attempt to develop the world’s first adaptive array transceiver technology operating in the millimeter-wave Ka bands for cellular communications. More precisely, they’ve been successful in testing the super-fast successor of 4G Long Term Evolution (LTE), hitting a speed of 1.056 Gbps in tests, at a frequency of 28 GHz and to a distance of 2 kilometers. This represents the core of the 5G mobile communications system, this is what will make possible to transmit data up to several hundred times faster than current 4G networks. Once the 5G networks start being commercialized, users will be able to transmit massive data files, high quality digital movies “practically without limitation.” Fast, seamless downloads of 3D movies and games, real-time streaming of ultra high-definition content and even remote medical assistance will be available to subscribers. “The millimeter-wave band is the most effective solution to recent surges in wireless Internet usage. Samsung’s recent success in developing the adaptive array transceiver technology has brought us one step closer to the commercialization of 5G mobile communications in the millimeter-wave bands,” said Samsung executive vice president and head of digital media and communication R&D ChangYeong Kim. Although this sounds like a breakthrough, Samsung is not the first company to have developed the core tech for 5G networks.  NTT DoGoMo, in collaboration with the Tokyo Institute of...