Ultralow-Power Receivers: Overcoming Battery Limitations to Facilitate Self-Powered Operation

Fast forward to a world with 1 trillion wirelessly connected devices in which pervasive computing impacts every aspect of our lives. Now imagine that each of those devices operates on a battery that lasts an average of three years, which is very generous considering that most of today's Internet of Things (IoT) devices have batteries with much shorter lives. In that world, we would be changing 1 billion batteries per day just to maintain the network of devices. Setting aside for the moment the environmental impact of battery disposal at that scale, nobody wants to take on the battery maintenance problem. Today, this is what limits the mass adoption of IoT solutions. It is why factories have not installed monitors on their 10,000 assets and why shipping companies do not embed real-time tracking in every package label. When you examine the power consumption of IoT devices over their lifetime, most of the energy is used for wireless communication; of that electricity, a large amount is spent on network synchronization rather than transmitting data. This calls for better networking solutions to enable massive scales of devices and ultralow-power (ULP) radios to enable self-powered operation, eliminating the battery and, therefore, the maintenance problem.