CRI:CI:SUSTAIN: Next-Generation, Sustainable Infrastructure for the RF-Powered Computing Community

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The energy efficiency of microelectronics has been improving exponentially for decades. It is becoming possible to operate low power sensing, computing and communication platforms in a perpetual, battery-free fashion, with all power provided by Radio Frequency (RF) signals or other energy harvesting. The Wireless Identification and Sensing Platform (WISP) is an open source battery-free platform that the present investigators originally introduced in 2006. Hundreds of WISPs have been manufactured and distributed to researchers around the world. This infrastructure has enabled research in diverse areas of computer science, including networking, Human-Computer Interaction, Ubiquitous Computing, Robotics, and other areas. The present proposal will allow the researchers to integrate the latest research results, such as Ambient Backscatter Communication, into the WISP family, and also to reap the benefits of the most recent improvements in low power microelectronics. The proposal will allow us to produce a new generation of the infrastructure and mature it to the point that it becomes self sustaining, via sales of hardware or other means. We expect that the sustained infrastructure will support research in backscatter communication, low power systems and networking, and applications of ultra-low-power platforms. Battery-free sensing systems are expected to enable a wide array of new capabilities, which will generate substantial commercial impact in a wide variety of markets.Computing is becoming connected more and more deeply to the physical world, a transformation that can enable smart environments, better medical care, more efficient manufacturing, and more. However, the need to power physically embedded microelectronic systems is a key challenge. This project will allow us to sustain the WISP infrastructure for battery-free, RF-powered computing and communication. The infrastructure will enable research in several areas. In recent years, the PI and co-PI introduced Ambient Backscatter Communication, and backscatter-based WISP cameras, which have been widely recognized in the research community. Making these tools widely available will enable research on topics such as (ambient) backscatter networking, applications of battery-free cameras, and algorithms for interactive compression and computer vision in battery-free camera systems. This research would likely remain inaccessible for a long time to many computer and information science and engineering researchers, since there are no widely accessible platforms that support research on these topics. The sustained infrastructure will also enable novel application research, in areas such as improved human activity detection systems, battery-free input devices, and also research on body-implanted electronics, and long term structural health monitoring.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.