CI-ADDO-EN: Infrastructure for the RF-Powered Computing Community

在该项目开始之前，研究人员开发了一种名为WISP的新型RF供电传感和计算平台，该平台从RFID读取器发出的RF信号中获取其全部工作功率。 他们还开发了一个配套的SDR（软件定义无线电）阅读器平台，该平台使用称为反向散射的节能通信技术发送RF信号为WISP供电并与WISP通信。WISP和阅读器的硬件和软件都是开源的，并提供给研究界。 该提案增强了以前开发的基础设施，并通过向合格的研究人员捐赠下一代增强版WISP、阅读器和软件，使其更广泛地提供给研究界。 与第一代基础设施相比，增强型基础设施提高了读取范围、程序内存、计算能力和编程抽象。该项目促进了计算与物理世界越来越紧密联系的长期转型。这种转变可以实现更智能的生活和工作环境，更好的医疗保健，改善制造和物流，减少能源使用和污染以及其他好处。一个根本的困难是如何为这些物理嵌入式微电子系统供电。电池限制了设备的寿命、尺寸、重量和外形。然而，最近微电子技术的能源效率的提高使得仅使用从RF信号收集的功率来运行嵌入式计算机成为可能。 该提案为研究社区提供了基础设施，以实现RF供电的计算研究，从而将计算更深入地嵌入物理世界。

Prior to the start of this project, the investigators developed a novel RF-powered sensing and computing platform called the WISP that harvests the entirety of its operating power from RF signals emitted by RFID readers. They also developed a companion SDR (Software-Defined Radio) reader platform that sends RF signals to power and communicate with the WISPs using a power efficient communication technique known as backscatter. The hardware and software for both the WISPs and readers was open-sourced and made available to the research community. This proposal enhances that previously developed infrastructure, and makes it more widely available to the research community, by donating next generation, enhanced versions of the WISPs, readers, and software to qualified researchers. Compared to the first generation infrastructure, the enhanced infrastructure has improved read range, program memory, computing power, and programming abstractions.This project facilitates a long-term transformation in which computing becomes more and more deeply connected to the physical world. This transformation can enable smarter living and working environments, better medical care, improved manufacturing and logistics, reduced energy usage and pollution, and other benefits. A fundamental difficulty has been how to power these physically-embedded microelectronic systems. Batteries limit devices lifetimes, size, weight, and form factor. However, improvements in the energy efficiency of microelectronics have recently made it possible to run embedded computers using only power harvested from RF signals. This proposal provides infrastructure to the research community to enable RF-powered computing research, and thus deeper embedding of computation in the physical world.