And You Thought
You Were Out of Energy

Posted in General 4 years, 8 months ago.

It seems as though articles and discussions confronting the inevitable bottleneck surrounding truly wireless and mobile devices has finally hit the “big time.” For those of you wondering what this is about, let me provide some background information. Moore’s Law calls for the performance of computers “chips” to double every 18-24 months based on speed, size, and price. While Moore accurately predicted the speed at which technology would increase, his law lacks one key aspect; efficiency. Unfortunately, the efficiency of these “chips” has been overlooked for too long. Hence the sudden and almost panicked realization that it is not the speed of the devices that has us at a figurative standstill from bigger and better things, but it is the inefficient use of these “chips.”

Batteries are the fuel for our life. Everything we use in a wireless and mobile fashion makes use of some form of battery or similar electrical supplement. Unfortunately, the batteries that have powered our devices are not being advanced at the same rate laid down by Moore’s Law. Instead, batteries are becoming, either bigger and heavier or much more expensive. Aside from the size, weight, and heat associated with today’s batteries, the gadgets which take advantage of these batteries are becoming more demanding. Now, only one device can function as your cell/mobile phone, pda, camera, MP3 player, and gaming device. With the increasing demand in productivity among end-users, come hybrid devices that all use a single battery for power. Dave Cederholm posted a great and humorous depiction of the clutter that is most of our desks and the “octopus of resulting cables.” Also, in this months Wired the introduction of what Michael S. Malone is calling “Moore’s Second Law” addresses this very issue of increased demand on batteries with little improvement of actual batteries.

The one thing that made me really think about this issue is some alternatives that have been developed but have yet to catch a foothold in the market. The first and most obvious solution would be super efficient fuel cells in our devices. Again, Wired has a great article regarding these supposed “mini fuel cells.” However, we have yet to even see a working version be produced. Other solutions include MobileWise’s “wire-free electric power.” Basically, you plug this “pad” in to a single socket and any device that takes advantage of this technology can be placed on the pad and is automatically recharged by simply being on the pad. While this has great vision, I have to question the adoption of this technology by cell phone companies, computer companies, and other manufacturers of wireless/mobile devices. Instead, I personally believe the answer lies in some form of “airwave” recharging. Since all radio waves are simply a form of energy, if one could harness and convert this wave into an electrical current it would revolutionize the industry. The main disadvantage of this is that if you convert the radio waves to electrical energy, you degenerate the actual signal. Once this loss of signal quality is addressed and either corrected or worked around, we will have the ability to NEVER have to recharge any of our devices; they will simply recharge themselves. Yeah, like I said, revolutionary!