Wireless Charging Start-Up Claims 30-Foot Radius

Lucas123 writes "At Disrupt this week, Ossia Inc. demonstrated for the first time its wireless charging technology that founder Hatem Zeine said has a 30-foot radius and, like WiFi, can charge through walls and 'around corners.' The technology, still in prototype phase, uses the same spectrum as other wireless standards, such as WiFi and Bluetooth. The Cota wireless charging system includes a charger and a receiver — either a dongle device or chip-tech integrated into a product, such as a smartphone or battery. While it has yet to be miniaturized, Zeine said the wireless technology will eventually be small enough to fit into a AAA battery or any portable electronic device. While the technology has wider industrial implications, as a consumer product, a charging unit will likely sell for around $100, he said."

Comments

Re:Holy EMF Batman?

[Dzimas]

I dunno, but the fillings in my mouth are tingling.

Potential Snake Oil

[The RoboNerd]

He attached a cube to an iphone, held it in the air, and it started charging. We have to go by faith that there are no batteries in the cube. Sorry but this sounds like snake oil.

Re:Wifi allergics are going to freak out

[WillgasM]

To be fair, their headgear might actually exacerbate the issue.

Re:Holy EMF Batman?

[M0HCN]

Well many homes already posess a 2.4GHz ISM band field generator, a few minor modification to the door interlock any you have just saved yourself $100.....

The trouble with shrinking this sort of thing is that it moves you from a near field situation, where coupling is largely magnetic, to a far field one where coupling is electromagnetic (Yes I know they both are really electromagnetic, bear with me), and that raises interesting questions of physics, and also of local power density close to the transmitter.

Now, there is also the health physics questions which for a non ionising EM field at 2.4Ghz come down to considering thermal effects. At 2.4Ghz this largely comes down to thermal effects in the skin and other surface layers (2.4GHz is used in microwave ovens for a reason, water has an absorbtion band there), the surface layer that **REALLY** matters in this is the eye! A few watts per square metre power flux density is probably not too much of a problem, much more might be.

I smell a startup about to try for some more funding!

73 M0HCN.

The actual tech

[AdamHaun]

I dug up what looks to be the main patent for the technology from 2008:

The microwave energy is focused onto a device to be charged by a power transmitter having one or more adaptively-phased microwave array emitters. Rectennas within the device to be charged receive and rectify the microwave energy and use it for battery charging and/or for primary power. A communications channel is opened between the wireless power source and the device to be charged. The device to be charged reports to the power source via the channel a received beam signal strength at the rectennas. This information is used by the system to adjust the transmitting phases of the microwave array emitters until a maximum microwave energy is reported by the device to be charged. Backscatter is minimized by physically configuring the microwave array emitters in a substantially non-uniform, non-coplanar manner.

I don't know enough about antennas and E&M to evaluate that. Any help here? According to the articles it gets ~10% efficiency at 10 feet and receives (?) 1 watt at 30 feet.

On to the possible crank warning signs:
* According to his LinkedIn profile, he's spent his whole career being a CEO and/or (later) doing software testing at Microsoft.
* He's identified as a physicist, but all he has to show for it is a bachelor's in physics from the University of Manchester (where he also "studied ... computational linguistics"). No graduate degree or research career.
* Twenty years after he gets his degree, having done nothing but software, he's suddenly producing miraculous hardware based on cutting-edge physics?
* Charger is hidden behind a curtain during a demo.
* Charger is six feet tall, but they're going to consumerize it to the size of a desktop PC in two years, when it will cost ~$100.
* Replacing all their off-the-shelf hardware with custom-built optimized hardware? No problem!
* Current fridge-sized charger has 200 transmitters, but when consumerized will have "20,000 transmitters in an 18-inch cube".
* The only public demo makes an iPhone declare itself to be charging. No electrical test equipment or data shown. No real evidence that it does anything.
* Claims the power goes through walls just like Wi-Fi, even though Wi-Fi signal strength can drop by orders of magnitude when it goes through walls.
* Charger only gets 10% efficiency from 10 feet away in open air, but this is never mentioned as an obstacle. Come to think of it, no technical obstacles are mentioned at all.
* This:

“In wave theory and electromagnetic systems, you don’t get linearities everywhere,” he added, describing the science behind Cota. “There are situations where double could mean for more, like double could mean square, or 3 plus 3 apples could result in a net total of 9 apples, so to speak. When you move from the linear version to the power version, things happen that were quite surprising.”

I don't know, maybe I'm being too hard on the guy. Maybe he's been doing physics and electronics as hobbies all this time, actually did come up with a workable idea, and used his management experience to drive the development of a real product. Maybe they really will have a commercialized version ready in a couple months and I'll have to eat crow. I just can't help but feel skeptical of people who announce their world-changing new product before it actually is a product.