A research team in Saudi Arabia has created a low-consumption, energy-impacting alternative that could make use of modulated sunlight to replace traditional Wifi.
Currently under development at the KAUST, (King Abdullah University of Science and Technology), the system uses elements of "intelligent glass": double-cell liquid crystal shutters (DLS). These elements quickly alter the polarity of sunlight passing through them and could conceivably find ample space in the windows of large rooms such as offices.
The binary sun
These polarity changes in sunlight (perceivable and encodable by smartphone cameras, not the human eye) would be used a bit like the 1s and 0s in binary code. And, controlled by these intelligent windows, manage the flow of information now entrusted to Wifi.
A turning point in terms of consumption. Importantly, while traditional Wifi routers use between 5 and 20 watts of electricity, DLS liquid crystal shutters use only 1 watt. An amount, scientists say, could be provided by a small solar panel.
Smart windows and bright wifi: what about when the sun is not there?
As always when a search is in its infancy, even smart windows will face several challenges. Improvements needed before becoming a mass technology. First of all the transmission speed: Calculations indicate that in the current configuration form, Wifi made with the sun's rays could transmit data at a rate of 16 kilobits per second. It can be done much better.
Obviously, then, the system it would only work while the sun is shining. For this reason, its use would be optimal to save energy during the day, by activating the normal Wifi after sunset.
"We are fine-tuning the hardware needed to implement the new version of the prototype," says lead scientist, Associate Professor Basem Shihada. "We would like to increase the data rate from kilobits to mega and gigabits per second." Good luck.
The article on researching smart windows was published in the IEEE Photonics magazine: I link it here.
