Pulling Power out of Thin Air

The Wireless Identification and Sensing Platform, a project of Intel Research Seattle with significant input from students and faculty of the University of Washington, is a project looking to leverage the capabilities of RFID tags, but also supporting sensing and computing, so as to harvest the power it uses from the reader's emitted radio signals. WISPs have been used to sense quantities such as light, temperature, acceleration, strain, liquid level, and to investigate embeddeded security. Most of the work on WISP so far has involved single WISPs performing sensing or computing functions. 

Feature of WISP:

Up to 10ft range with harvested RF power

Ultra-low power MSP430 microcontroller

32K of program space, 8K of storage

Light, temperature and 3D-accelerometers

Backscatter communication to reader

Reader to WISP communication (ASK)

Real-time clock

Storage capacitor (to sense without reader)

Voltage sensor (measures stored charge)

Extensible hardware (to add new sensors)

HW UART & GPIO for external connections

Works with select EPC Class 1 Gen 2 readers

WISP software to sense and upload data

Reader application to drive WISP

Industry standard development tools

Access to hardware design and source code 

The next phase of WISP work will likely involve the interaction of many WISPs, and thus allow an exciting exploration of a new battery-free form of wireless sensor networking.

Read more at: http://www.seattle.intel-research.net/wisp/