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Apple Patent Hints At Wirelessly Charging Your iPhone Via Wi-Fi Routers (appleinsider.com)
According to AppleInsider, "Apple is experimenting with medium- to long-distance wireless charging technologies that could one day allow users to charge up their iPhones with nothing more than a Wi-Fi router." From the report: Detailed in Apple's patent application for "Wireless Charging and Communications Systems With Dual-Frequency Patch Antennas" is a method for transferring power to electronic devices over frequencies normally dedicated to data communications. In its various embodiments, the invention notes power transfer capabilities over any suitable wireless communications link, including cellular between 700 MHz and 2700 MHz, and Wi-Fi operating at 2.4 GHz and 5 GHz. More specifically, the document's claims apply to millimeter wave 802.11ad spectrum channels currently in use by the WiGig standard, which operates over the 60 GHz frequency band. Theoretically, the proposal opens the door to wire-free charging from in-home Wi-Fi routers to cellular nodes and even satellite signals. Of course, amplitude in a wireless system is normally a function of distance. Like conventional wireless charging techniques, Apple's design requires two devices -- a transmitter and receiver -- to function. Each device contains one or more antennas coupled to wireless circuitry capable of making phase and magnitude adjustments to transmitted and received signals. Such hardware can be employed in dynamic beam steering operations.
you're blocking my charger
Since the energy density increases with frequency, why not use THz instead of GHz? Put a harvesting panel on the back of the phone and get lots of free charging energy.
The access point, not the phone!
Somehow I think an Apple employee saw an article about charging the phone by popping it into a microwave and realised they didn't have a patent on the technology yet. That was something easily fixed.
Remember that your router is limited to 1W output (FCC limits in the US for all 2.4Ghz and 5Ghz devices), fired in every direction. At a mere 1 meter away from the router, even if your cell is placed facing the router (to have maximim surface area), and assuming 100% efficiency... your cell would harvest about 0.0004 watts of charging power.
But it will not be 100% efficient. Your cell will not be within 1 meter of the router most of the time. This entire idea is ludicrous, and anyone thinking that it's a great idea does not know much about physics.
"I will trust Google to 'do no evil' until the founders no longer run it." Hello Alphabet.
Wireless is not very efficient, and probably more so the greater the distance between device and charging station. Just not sure why we have such a obsession with wireless everything?
Given that magnetic fields are harmful to the human body and several lawsuits have been won against companies on this topic.
Why would a sucessfull company with a pile of cash even go near this technology ?
File the patent with you least favorite competitors name on it.
Or your going to be driving a Pinto running on 3 cylinders with a full tank of gas wearing oil soaked clothes in heavy traffic on the highways in hell.
...we only have dialup. No wireless. Won't work here.
Ahhh, yet another proof of concept - on paper!
I think that Nikola Tesla might call this out as an old idea (http://teslaradio.com/pages/tesla.htm,https://www.damninteresting.com/teslas-tower-of-power/) although his designs were a little more grand. If he'd only pulled it off we'd have been wireless for a century now. :-)
Exactly. "Wireless charging" assumes someone can break the laws of Physics.
It's really weird how people who know NOTHING about technology assume they can make decisions about technology.
It's really weird how people who know NOTHING about PHYSICS assume they can make decisions about technology. FTFY
Time for bed, said Zebedee - boing
Dialup is a way to connect to the internet, Wi-Fi is for short range wireless networks. They are completely different technologies for completely different purposes. You can have a dialup connection to the internet, and Wi-Fi for your home network. Or you can have a broadband connection with a completely wired home network, or just one computer with no network. Dialup has nothing to do with the current conversation.
More radiation, more cancers, go for it!
Patent a tech that they cant make in the hopes that in the future when a real tech company does ( if they cant buy that company to keep it from the rest of the world) they can try and sue the company out of existence. Meanwhile we have to listen to apple worshippers drone on and on about how apple has a secret lab where there are cracking this tech until then.
I really liked the idea of the mag-safe connectors. And was really looking forward to it appearing on real computers someday.
But instead of licensing it out they just used it on their own crap for awhile... & i understand theyre not even doing -that- anymore.
-sigh-
I hate it when apple actually invents something good, its pretty much a guarantee that it will never see common usage.
These "lots" of energy you are talking about are not nearly enough for a modern smartphone.
Even if you would make use of the electromagnetic radiation coming from a nuclear fusion reactor, and position your phone optimally, a harvesting panel the size of a smartphone would barely be able to gain 1W.
I think you missed the joke because when around a couples of hundreds THz, said nuclear fusion reactor emitting the electromagnetic radiation is called the sun.
So we're more speaking about 3W range. (3.5W for 12x12cm)
Still not enough to fully power a modern smartphone monster with both CPU and GPU on full gear.
But solar charging is actually really a thing.
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
EVEN with beam steering, where the whole half-watt of power from the router is aimed directly at your phone,
There's a frenquency range above the 400 THz mark, that can be efficiently steered, and could be collected on the back of your phone : /.ers are not very familiar with this strange energy beem, being basement dwellers ourselves).
it's called SUN LIGHT (Yeah I know we
I think that's what the above poster jokingly referred to when saying to go to higher freqency.
(And for the record, a solar cell the size of a modern huge smartphone could probably collect ~2-3W of power.
There are actual power banks produced with 12x12cm sollar cells that selfcharge them in the 3~5W range when exposed to the sun)
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
The second most ridiculous thing in "Atlas Shrugged" was that Dagny Taggart invented a perpetual motion train "powered by ambient electricity in the air."
Of course the most ridiculous part was the part where CEOs joined together to create a utopia in Colorado with no poor or working people, just their own bootstraps, where they presumably ate nothing, repaired their own lavish houses, and needed no help from tradespeople, doctors or other "takers" who were not rich CEOs and obviously just wanted a handout.
I note from 2009 http://logs.nslu2-linux.org/li... ...
'Some brief numbers indicate that 60GHz - power over wifi may not be insane
Jun 07 02:22:58 And at that scale, you can do beamforming antennas on a platform the size of a microSD card'
Or from 2009, " 60GHz or so steered beams are 'easy' - given good 60GHz tech that makes 128 or so channel transmitters cheap."
It's depressing patents like this get granted.
re #1
There is evidence that Apple isnt developing even it's own hardware, as though they have a choice to pick from existing hardware developments in China where System-on-chip netbook style computers are expounded and tailored to a architecture-limitted style for cost-cutting reasons and that explains why the limitation of MacBook Pro at it's present form and why the prior MacBook Pro versions look like Duplo for dummies.
re #2
Sounds to me like Affle is only making a defensive patent as though about to sue someone or expand it to other tech like... a passive clockless computer that only executes when it has an optimal power source (my ip, not an iDea(tm) (thankyou, thankyou ever0ne)).
re #3.
Im an analog computer technician, so as soon as you guys exhaust your digital phony balogne platforms then I will continue where I left off.
The moment Apple actually pulls this off and starts emitting enough power from WiFi Access points to charge an iPhone is the moment I start permanently wearing my tinfoil hat. I'll also have to reluctantly start siding with these crazy folks.
1 watt wouldn't work very well to charge a smart phone with a 3,000 mah battery. On the other hand, a Bluetooth headphone will have a battery of around 100mah. In use, a Bluetooth headphone will use maybe 150mw or so. Idle, much less than that. So a constant charge of 1 watt, or even 100mw, would be sufficient to keep a Bluetooth headphone charged.
Do Apple customers have any use for Bluetooth headphones these days? :)
t's really weird how people who know NOTHING about PHYSICS assume they can make decisions about technology.
I teach physics. In fact, I teach electrodynamics, off and on. Is it possible to charge a cell phone with wireless technology? Sure. All you need is a big enough tesla coil and a big enough loop and the ability to rectify broadband noise. If you are radiating a couple of hundred watts you can probably pull a watt out of it if you aren't too far away. Of course, you can also cook a hot dog if it isn't too far away.
Now let's consider 802.11 signals. The signal strength is limited to 1 watt by the FCC, but IEEE specs peg it at 23 to 24 dBm (200-250 mW). One whole watt is 30 dBm in decibels(milliwatt), and you can get an effective gain of 6 dBm (x4) or 4 watts with the antenna:
https://www.air802.com/fcc-rul...
Most wireless receivers operate with signal power (coming into the receiver antenna) in the ballpark of -10 dBm to -100 dBm, where at the low end of that range one is likely down in the noise. That is (translating to power) 100 microwatts down to 10^{-13} watts (10^{-10} milliwatts). If one takes the average cell phone's surface area -- maybe 50 or 60 cm^2 -- and compare it to the radiating solid angle of a transmitter just 50 cm away, it is a very small fraction -- order of 50 to 50^2 or order of 1%. So if one starts with 200 mW and receive it with 100% efficiency around a half meter away, one would be lucky to get more than around 1 mW. USB cell phone wall chargers, OTOH, typically use 1 to 2 W, and still take hours to charge a discharged phone. We could anticipate charging times of order 1000 hours, then, at a mW trickle.
The one place and way this MIGHT work, then, is if one places the phone ON the 802.11 transmitter, just outside of the antenna, close enough that the phone subtends at least 1/10 of its radiation pattern. Assuming a 36 dBm antenna signal strength (4 W), picking up 0.4W, with maybe 0.1 to 0.2 W usable power input after accounting for RMS power and efficiencies, you would be to the point where one might be able to recharge a partially discharged phone in a day.
The big question is then, who would want to do this? A normal 23 dBm transmitter would take weeks to charge the phone even sitting on top of it, and the phone itself would be sucking up the signal you need for your devices to operate. It would still take all day to charge instead of a few hours. It would (probably) cost more than existing "charging pads" that do the same thing and charge your phone wirelessly through induction and an inverter. It would interfere with your 802.11 device and likely reduce its effectiveness at the purpose for which it was intended. It's like "hey, we can build an antenna so that if we put your phone in the microwave oven, it will recharge it really quickly, if we shield the phone and don't mind possibly ruining the microwave". Sure, but why would we, when wall-warts and a cable cost $15, when solar chargers that actually work and don't leach power from 802.11 devices cost less than $100, etc?
The one thing you will NOT be able to do is to recharge your phone from across the room, or keep your phone charged by just sitting in the same room as an 802.11 transmitter. You'd need a phased array of antennae a half-meter wide to get enough directional concentration across a room, and it would make your transmitter pretty much useless as an actual transmitter for 802.11 devices long before that. Even if you pulled ALL the power from a 23 dBm transmitter the numbers just don't make sense for this.
Even when the experts all agree, they may well be mistaken. --- Bertrand Russell.
I suspect we're talking about charging something much smaller than a phone, i.e. some kind of wearable tech with modest power requirements. It could enable you to wear the item all day and ever bother to put it on a charger.
Just throw all your Apple devices into a conventional microwave oven and nuke on high power for a few minutes. Free fireworks!
Um Sir... You teach physics? Let me correct something... You can get an ERP of 4 Watts with antenna gain, but if you are putting in 1/2 a watt, you CANNOT get more than 1/2 watt at the destination. That 6 dB of gain is "effective gain" compared to an isotropic radiator and all it really means is you are focusing the radiated energy in a specific direction, where an isotropic radiator radiates equally in all directions. The first law of thermodynamics cannot be violated here.
Sounds unlikely this could do much to power a phone, but how about something much smaller, like bluetooth (and now wifi?) headphones? Or other small devices?
OH BOY!
Time to buy stock in Home Insurance ETFs!
Apple + Wireless Charging + Home Router = Home Destruction By iPhome Induced Fire!
Gotta give Timmy and his other Queers at Apple Kudooze for "cum'n up' with a new way to burn a house down and SPIKE home insurance rates!
Jajajajajajajajajajajaj
Not sure what phone charger you are using but most are 1-2A not 1-2W.
That makes your already damning case even 5x better than it would actually be.
How long to charge a 4.2V 2.8Ah battery with 1mW? 11700 hours assuming the phone is off, and no charge loss from powered down electronics.
... allow users to charge up their iPhones with nothing more than a Wi-Fi router.
Now I have to carry around a Wi-Fi router and find a place to plug that in. (sigh) Fucking Apple.
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
So your telling me, Apple has basically patented Tesla's invention?
How unoriginals, in form and function.. par for the course.. and not very innovative.
I say Apple should patent that shake-back-and-forth charging tech they use in those batteryless flashlights so their fanbois can charge their phone while they masturbate over it.
Sounds like all of those other ridiculous "same old idea -- but on the Internet!" patents.
I remember reading about an ultra-low power wifi antenna that uses incoming wifi signals and "reflects" those signals back at the sender, but somehow manipulates the reflected signal to carry data. This reduced power required by the transmitter by some large fraction. This is the only reasonable explanation I can think of because remote battery charging is not efficient at all, but this signal reflection claimed to be very efficient.
Lisa, get in here!... In this house we obey the laws of thermodynamics!
This would also seem to be a way to charge a smartwatch or some kind of sensors or other devices such as Amazon Echo-like devices.
And this could easily provide energy to power security cameras. Having to change batteries in a security camera sucks, and solar isn't always possible or reliable so this could be used as a primary or backup way of constantly keeping remote cameras and microphones charged. They could use passive wifi or similar (lte or Bluetooth based?) technology to transmit data back.
Oops. You are right and I knew that, with a part of my brain that obviously went unused. But yes, already damning case even worse.
If they want to do something constructive, they could make their damn phones waterproof to 2m by default and make it use an inductive charger by default. Building a phone that not only dies if you get a single drop of water NEAR the charging port but then clicks over to void your warranty was evil from the beginning.
rgb
Even when the experts all agree, they may well be mistaken. --- Bertrand Russell.
I think you did a great job with that write up.
What I do see in common with all the critics is that they base things on the current size of phones, current wifi routers, and current phone power consumption.
A quick side note: I think that even the Qi wireless charging, where the device rests right on top of the pad, is wasteful and pretty silly. Convenient? Slightly, but it could just have some metal tabs and a cradle like old wireless phones. Anyway, moving on...
Someday, we might have a device that uses far less power. Maybe it'll natively do far less too (run stuff in the cloud)? There could also be some personal integration that makes a much larger antenna feasible (maybe a sleeve?).
Maybe there's also multiple "wifi" devices in range that can triangulate where the user is?
Maybe those can then focus a signal on/near the device, and go all the way up to the 1W output (maybe not doing actual wifi, or maybe riding on top of the signal).
After all that, maybe the little trickle that is left would be enough to run the device at full power. Maybe not "charge" it, but if it can run it, then the device would effectively last nearly forever without a recharge. That could be pretty nice. I'm thinking more along the lines of watches and IoT than what we currently do on phones... but still... even if it's incredible wasteful and inefficient, it might still sell and function enough to be useful. Maybe?
Say the transmitter has a 6 dBi antenna and the receiver measures -60dBm RSSI. Change the antenna to 9dBi and RSSI increases to -57dBm with the same 1/2W radio signal. Isn't this more power received from increased spectral density?
The patent does not make any claim about sending power over WiFI, therefore every comment complaining that you can't send enough power over WiFi is off-topic.
What it *does* claim is sending power using the same antenna array as communications in the 60GHz band. It does not mention a frequency for the power transmision.
What is particularly interesting is Claim 7: "The electronic device defined in claim 6 further comprising a display, wherein the wireless power transfer circuitry is configured to transfer power wirelessly at microwave frequencies using the array of antennas." This implies building the array in a monitor.
"The one place and way this MIGHT work, then, is if one places the phone ON the 802.11 transmitter, just outside of the antenna, "
Look at claim 7.