IDT and Intel Join Forces For Wireless Charging

MojoKid writes "Intel has selected Integrated Device Technology (IDT) to develop an integrated transmitter and receiver chipset for the company's Wireless Charging Technology (WCT) based on magnetic resonance technology, it was announced [Wednesday]. The technology won't require you to plop your smartphone or other gear on a special charging mat (based on inductive charging), but you will be able to wirelessly charge your devices from an equipped device like a notebook. In addition, magnetic resonance charging is significantly more efficient than previous generation inductive technologies and it produces less heat build up in the process. Intel didn't say when WCT will appear in shipping products, but promised to update plans and timelines at a later date."

Comments

This will be even better

[geekoid]

in a car.
I would love for my phones to charge automatically when I ma in the car, or at home. No more wires.

Re:This will be even better

[Kenja]

I thought you where referring to passively (wirelessly) charged electric cars, which is actually something people are working on.

mag field "leakage" problems anyone??

[RobertLTux]

you have to figure that there should be a considerable magnetic field around these devices so how will this work with say Flash drives credit cards and other "stuff" that does not like being in a above background mag field??

Re:mag field "leakage" problems anyone??

[jamesc]

you have to figure that there should be a considerable magnetic field around these devices so how will this work with say Flash drives credit cards and other "stuff" that does not like being in a above background mag field??

The article stresses efficiency, so presumably it just sends out a periodic magnetic "ping" and doesn't turn on full power charging until a compatable device answers and completes a handshake. Note the 2-Way Secure Communication and Foreign Objection blocks in the block diagram.

Flash drives aren't based on magnetic media, so they don't care about mag fields until they're strong enough to be a concern for you as well. (See Diathermy.) Shouldn't be a problem at the power levels they're talking about.

Credit cards are magnetic, but are fairly resistant to being demagnetized. See the Mythbusters episode "Barrel of Bricks, Third Rail, Eelskin Wallet Demagnetize" on their Collection 1, disc 1, episode 3. It took a fairly strong and changing field to erase credit cards. I suppose I'd keep all my cards several inches away from the charging coil, just to be safe.

Floppies could be demagnitized, but they're curiosities now.

Bare disk drives maybe could be affected, since their cases are now mostly plastic. Not a problem for most people.

I'm not seeing much of a downside otherwise. As is often the case in such matters, convenience in charging stuff will likely outweigh the hassle of an occasional erased mag-stripe card.

Re:mag field "leakage" problems anyone??

[Bruce Perens]

You walk around all day in a field that is strong enough to physically move a compass needle. As you change position, you do have a changing magnetic field intersecting with that credit card.

Mythbusters can goof, but they are promoting that the way to learn is from experiments and observation. Which is science.

Re:mag field "leakage" problems anyone??

[Bruce Perens]

Yes, but it's persistent and of course the effect is cumulative. Another little push on the magnetic domains every time you move. So, it's stronger than you think, but still not enough to demagnetize that strip of oxide in a few years.

Re:mag field "leakage" problems anyone??

[subreality]

Not true - magnetic media requires a minimum magnetic field strength to alter it. Think of it like the friction of a book sitting on a table. If you push very gently on it, nothing happens. It doesn't start moving just because you start pushing in random directions either. However, at some point if you push hard enough the static friction is overcome.

The effect is called coercivity. Old floppies required around 300 Oe, and were thus easily damaged by moderately strong magnets. Credit cards and modern hard drives are around 4000 Oe. More examples.

Earth's magnetic field is less than 1 Oe. It's not in the league to even begin pushing magnetic domains around on modern media no matter how much they move.

Re:mag field "leakage" problems anyone??

[Bruce Perens]

I was wondering if there was a hysteresis of some kind. It looks like it's frequency-dependent, too. This is how you can charge a device without degaussing magnetic media.

We're joke

[postmortem]

70 yrs after death of Tesla we're not able to figure wireless power distribution.

Re:We're joke

[kthreadd]

The distribution is not the problem.
The problem is not frying the human that stepped into the power field.

Re:We're joke

[MobileTatsu-NJG]

Yeah, those guys on parallel Earth totally beat us to it already.

Neat

[MobileTatsu-NJG]

Right now I have about 6 different types of chargers, each plugged in in various places around the house. I would love it if I could just have a 'charging table' where you just sit your gadget on it, let it simmer, and pick it up later with a full charge.

Re:Neat

[slew]

FWIW, you don't need this technology for that, you could use simple inductive charging (like electric toothbrushes). This tech uses evanescent magnetic fields to charge things a bit farther away (maybe a meter depending on the frequency they use), and with higher efficiency.

Efficiency

[Thelasko]

Forgive me, but every time I hear about wireless power, I think about how inefficient that sounds. Wouldn't a (more or less) direct connection to the power source be more efficient? Aren't we trying to conserve energy, and improve energy efficiency?

Re:Efficiency

[hilltaker7]

While philosophically we are indeed seeking to conserve energy and improve energy efficiency; economically, convenience will trump green in the market place every time. It is the world we live in.

Re:Efficiency

[Anonymous Coward]

There is still the matter of converting the energy to and from that transmitted form, even if you get all of it there. For your laser example, those efficiencies are a lot worse than just a wire.

Re:Efficiency

[slew]

Forgive me, but every time I hear about wireless power, I think about how inefficient that sounds. Wouldn't a (more or less) direct connection to the power source be more efficient? Aren't we trying to conserve energy, and improve energy efficiency?

It's important to understand that even a "direct" connect is just a waveguide for an electromagnetic wave. Waveguides can have all sorts of losses (resistive, radiation, etc.) that limit their efficiency. At typical power distribution frequencies resistive losses can be quite large with long narrow wires, although in general with an impedance matched zip-cord, the radiation losses tend to be pretty low. Also direct connect isn't completely direct connect either. Inside that wall-wart is a step-down transformer which is basically a small inductive power transfer (wireless power), which has its own power efficiency issues.

Theoretically, the "free-space" transmission (well not really free-space, but air-space), has the potential to eliminate most of the resistive loss, although in practice there is this basic problem of radiation power loss. This type of tech (resonant magnetic coupling) has a few tweaks to try to help with this problem. First off, there's use of use of near-field evanscent waves which don't propogate very far (evanscent waves are the exponentally decay solution to the em wave equation) keeping most of the power local. Second, there is the use of resonance which reduces the losses and increases the efficiency of power transfer. The combination of these ideas allows pretty good power efficiency. I think you can get about 80% efficiency with near-field (vs 90% for a wall-wart connect). For the small amount of power going to recharge a mobile device, that's not really that much to worry about (if you were trying to power say a TV or a stereo, that would be another thing).

Re:Mythbusters and CRT monitors

[jamesc]

I cited Mythbusters for convenience. Plus, they actually try stuff and aren't afraid to admit that they got it wrong and retry in later episodes. That is a lot more scientific than certain groups I could name.

When they get a "Confirmed" result, that's real data. The proposed effect happened under those conditions. When they make a number of attempts, fail, and label a myth "Busted", is when they're the least scientific. Later episodes may prove them wrong. Kind of ironic for a show named Mythbusters.

Anyway, back to the topic. Yes, your 21" CRT does indeed produce large magnetic fields when it is first turned on. There's a degaussing coil wrapped around the front of the tube, inside the enclosure. It's there to erase any stray magnetic fields on the shadow mask. It only runs for a short time.

Thereafter, magnetic fields mess up the picture, as anyone who has held a bar magnet up to a color TV or monitor can confirm.

If we could manage all those years sitting in front of huge degaussing coils, I suspect that our mag-stripe cards are pretty safe. Just exercise a little care.

$20 says this will fuck over my ham radio...

[RocketRabbit]

I'm an amateur radio operator and guess what? If this fucks with my activities it will never fly. We killed broadband over power lines and we will kill wireless cell phone charging too, if it interferes with licensed operators.

Besides, unless this technology has a very long range, it will be pointless anyway. If it does have long range, it will be used for rampant electricity theft. Either way, if you think about it, it's a stupid idea.

Phone design change

[Areyoukiddingme]

Such a system would allow phone manufacturers to completely eliminate physical connectors entirely. Bluetooth and WiFi for data, this for power. Apple especially could make a perfectly sealed candy bar phone, glued together. On the upside, phones built that way could default to being water resistant, and it wouldn't be too big of a leap to make them waterproof to some reasonable depth.

Unfortunately that also means that Apple will think they can patent the idea of a socket-free phone...

(And yes, I mean that literally. They won't try to patent an implementation. They'll do their damnedest to patent the entire idea.)