Sensor systems in the form of various Internet-of-Things (IoT) applications have become indispensable today. A key focus in the development process of such systems is minimizing power consumption to enable the sensor system to operate autonomously for as long as possible. A promising approach is backscattering, where a significant portion of the energy consumption is shifted from the sensor system to an external reading device.
To further reduce the energy consumption of such systems, Yanick Schoch, an employee at the IMES Institute for Microelectronics, Embedded Systems, and Sensors and a master's student specializing in Electrical Engineering, developed a custom-designed microchip.
Bluetooth-Low-Energy-Backscattering
In industrial environments, the use of Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) backscattering is particularly important as it enables wireless communication with minimal power consumption. In backscattering systems, sensor systems reflect existing radio signals instead of generating their own, significantly reducing energy consumption. This makes BLE backscattering ideal for battery-free sensor systems that can be used in goods tracking, condition monitoring, and predictive maintenance.
Yanick's work resulted in a microchip that applies this principle to communicate with standard smartphones via BLE. This eliminates the need for specific and expensive reading devices required by comparable technologies like Radio Frequency Identification (RFID). Compared to existing solutions, the energy consumption per transmitted unit of information was significantly reduced.
At the general meeting of the semiconductor industry sector of Swissmem, Yanick was awarded third place in the Best Thesis Award. The prize was sponsored by Hitachi Energy.