Smart Infrastructure Exploiting Backscatter Communications

K-Briq是世界上第一个几乎完全由建筑垃圾制成的可持续砖，它展示了改变建筑行业的巨大潜力。来自赫瑞瓦特大学的衍生公司Kenoteq （https://kenoteq.com/）的这种新颖砖块得到了高度认可，例如获得了2018年的设计与创意奖（Converge Challenge）和2020年的泰晤士高等教育奖（年度STEM研究项目）。拟议的研究项目旨在将可持续性推向一个新的水平，即不仅是砖制造方面的可持续性，而且是用K-Briq建造的建筑物的日常运营的可持续性。这将通过将传感器嵌入砖块中来实现，这些传感器被放置在建筑物中后，可以建立无线网络来感知和协助建筑物运行。嵌入砖块意味着传感节点必须免维护，也就是说，不能依赖电池等外部电源。研究小组将进一步开发高效率的射频能量收集和反向散射无线通信技术，以实现节点的电力自主性和可靠的无线链路建立。

The K-Briq, a world-first sustainable brick made almost entirely of construction waste, has demonstrated the great potential to transform the construction industry. This novel brick from Kenoteq (https://kenoteq.com/), a spin-out startup from Heriot-Watt University, has been highly recognised, such as receiving Design and Creativity Award (Converge Challenge) in 2018 and Times Higher Education Award (STEM Research Project of the Year) in 2020. The proposed research project aims to push the sustainability to a next level, i.e., not only sustainability in terms of brick fabrication, but also sustainability to the every-day operation of the buildings that are constructed with the K-Briq. This will be enabled by embedding sensors into bricks, and they, after being laid into a building, can establish a wireless network to sense and assist building operation. That embedding into bricks means that the sensing nodes have to be maintenance-free, i.e., no external power sources like batteries can be relied on. The research team will further develop high-efficiency RF energy harvesting and backscattering wireless communication technologies to enable power autonomy to the nodes and reliable wireless link establishment.