A new radio the size of an ant can gather all the power it needs from the same electromagnetic waves that carry signals to its receiving antenna—no batteries required.
Designed to compute, execute, and relay commands, this tiny wireless chip costs pennies to make. It’s cheap enough to become the missing link between the internet as we know it and the linked-together smart gadgets envisioned in the “Internet of Things.”
“The next exponential growth in connectivity will be connecting objects together and giving us remote control through the web,” says Amin Arbabian, an assistant professor of electrical engineering at Stanford University who recently demonstrated this ant-sized radio chip at the VLSI Technology and Circuits Symposium in Hawaii.
"Cheap, tiny, self-powered radio controllers are an essential requirement for the Internet of Things," says Amin Arbabian. Stanford
