I-Corps: Software-Defined Distributed Wireless Charging

这个i-Corps项目的更广泛的影响/商业潜力是促进消费设备的持续运行，并支持不间断的安全关键应用，如老年人护理、患者和结构健康监测。该项目可以通过消除对低功率电子设备频繁充电的担忧，潜在地提高生活质量。通过对小型传感器进行无线充电，还可以减轻与更换电池相关的费用和环境问题。该项目将产生一个广泛的客户发现流程，通过该流程，高影响力的行业将从医疗保健、可穿戴设备、自动化行业和智能家居/办公室等行业中筛选出来。它将通过解决网络的关键能源需求，在新兴的物联网范式的背景下，刺激广泛的应用场景的创新。这个i-Corps项目定义了一个新的网络架构，能够通过结合硬件和软件平台来进行分布式无线射频充电。所提出的协作波束形成技术允许由于建设性干扰和使用最小接收器反馈的能量信号的实时适配而导致无线充电速率的指数级增加。该项目利用软件定义的分布式能量波束形成平面来确保持续的反馈，用于在提供高充电率的能量发射器处选择各种参数。最后，它评估网络上的能源需求，并能够主动安排能源广播。虽然最近已经研究了基于单个充电器的全向和基于MIMO的波束形成，但这个i-Corps项目试图探索从多个空间位置的能量发射器(ETS)进行分布式和并发能量传输的创新应用。

The broader impact/commercial potential of this I-Corps project is to facilitate the continuous operation of consumer devices as well as enable uninterrupted safety-critical applications such as elderly care, patient and structural health monitoring. The project can potentially enhance the quality of life by eliminating concerns of frequent charging of low-power electronic devices. By wireless charging of small form factor sensors, the expenses and environmental concerns associated with battery-replacements can also be mitigated. This project will result in an extensive customer discover process, through which high-impact sectors will be shortlisted from the sectors of healthcare, wearables, automative industry, and smart homes/offices. It will spur innovations across the wide spectrum of applications scenarios in context of the emerging Internet of Things paradigm by addressing the critical energy needs of the networkThis I-Corps project defines a new network architecture that is capable of distributed wireless RF-based charging by combining both hardware and software platforms. The proposed technique of collaborative beamforming allows an exponential increase in wireless charging rates due to constructive interference and real-time adaptation of energy signals using minimal receiver feedback. This project leverages a software-defined distributed energy beamforming plane to ensure continuous feedback used for selecting various parameters at the energy transmitters that give high charging rates. Finally, it assesses energy needs over the network and is able to schedule energy broadcasts proactively. While omni-directional and MIMO-based beamforming from a single charger have been investigated recently, this I-Corps project attempts to explore innovative applications of distributed and concurrent energy transfers from multiple spatially-located energy transmitters (ETs).