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Nokia Developed Wireless Power-Harvesting Phones
Al writes "An engineer from Nokia's UK research labs says that the company is developing technology that can harvest ambient electromagnetic radiation to keep a cellphone going. The researcher says that his group is working towards a prototype that could harvest up to 50 milliwatts of power — enough to slowly recharge a phone that is switched off. He says current prototypes can harvest 3 to 5 milliwatts. It will require a wideband receiver capable of capturing signals from between 500 megahertz and 10 gigahertz — a range that encompasses many different radio communication signals. Other researchers have developed devices that can harvest more modest power from select frequencies. A team from Intel previously developed a compact sensor capable of drawing 6 microwatts from a 1.0-megawatt TV antenna 4.1 kilometers away."
Crystal radio sets harvested enough power to drive an earphone-sized speaker.
In some circumstances, florescent light bulbs can draw enough power from a nearby power source to light up.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
It's more an electrochemical signal, though, not really anything to do with the energy of radio waves. It's electrical in the sense that it's charged (ions), not in the sense that there's an actual stream of electrons moving along like wires.
no more so than a bunch of radios tuning in. If an antenna or chunk of metal is between you and a signal, your signal quality will be degraded. If not, you have a virtual line of sight (or LOS via reflections from the ground, buildings, etc) and can receive like normal. Its like worrying about your lawn receiving less light because your neighbor has solar panels on his roof. If the panels were between you and your lawn, it wouldn't matter if they were generating power, or just made of plywood, your lawn would be in the shade, but since they're not, your grass will be just as green. Its not like these antennas suck up the power, it won't bend the radio waves towards it like a magnetic pole would affect magnetic fields.
Is it sad that I am more likely to recognize you and your posts by your sig than your name or UID?
I call BS on the phone call. I think your prof may have been pulling your legs. For one thing, 60 watts is a drop in the bucket compared to megawatt transmitters, for another, radio waves behave like light waves, there isn't a return loop or any sort of return transmission involved in radio waves.
Its not like these antennas suck up the power, it won't bend the radio waves towards it like a magnetic pole would affect magnetic fields.
Well, actually they do. It's not at all significant in the grand scheme of things, but antennas do affect (reduce) the signal in the area near them. Antenna designers refer to an antenna's "aperture", the effective area in space from which it can "suck" signal. This is a very abstracted view, but is a useful analogy to understand how antennas affect electromagnetic waves passing near them. It is as if your power-sucking cell phone device creates a radio shadow a couple feet in diameter, instead of only the size of the antenna. Fortunately, the effect only extends a few wavelengths from the antenna at most (the so-called near field region) and has absolutely no impact on receivers outside that space.
I am a geek attorney, but not your geek attorney unless you've already retained me. This is not legal advice.
Hertz came up with the math for (transverse) electromagnetic waves.
Tesla was into broadcast power - which he apparently visualized as using capacitive coupling to the ionosphere at high impedance and low frequency) along with conduction in it and the ground below it as the transport medium. That's just electric fields and conduction (or longitudinal waves in the ionosphere's plasma) rather than electromagnetic waves.
It happens that his systems would also generate electromagnetic radiation and propagate power with it. But it's apparently not the particular mechanism he had in mind. (It's also not as efficient as the one he envisioned, since EM waves radiate in all directions and falls off as inverse square, while Tesla's system would essentially pump energy into a resonant cavity and contain it between the ground and the ionosphere until it was dissipated by loads or parasitic resistances).
Now the devices in question in TFA are designed around Hertz's EM radiation rather than Tesla's "elevated capacitance" system. But it was Tesla, not Hertz, who was the big cheerleader for broadcast power using electric and magnetic phenomena (if not precisely Hertizan waves).
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way