This video appeared in Microwaves & RF and has been published here with permission.
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Batteries are the bane of IoT sensors, but they're typically a requirement as conventional energy-harvesting solutions like solar panels are often impractical. One solution is to provide power wirelessly. A power transmitter can typically energize multiple devices within its range. Though the amount of power tends to be small, it's usually sufficient enough for the sensors to operate as well as drive limited wireless communication to deliver information from the sensor.
Energous' PowerBridge is designed to send RF energy over the air and to devices with matching chips from the company that can store the energy for use by the device. Kero Basilios, Energous' Director of Application Engineering and Customer Support, shows the system in action (watch the video above). You can also watch Leveraging Wireless Power, which looks at InnoTractor's use of Energous' power technology to support an asset-tracking system that doesn't use batteries for its mobile IoT devices.
Energous sells the chips and devices to handle the wireless power exchange. The PowerBridge series is a packaged example of the transmit side (Fig. 1). It can send power to dozens of devices. And it doesn't just broadcast power like a conventional radio, but rather targets the individual devices for more efficient power transmission.
