WIRELESS
CHARGING-MODERN TECHNOLOGY ON THE MOBILE ITSELF.
AN Example of Wireless Recharging is Given Below:
If you've ever
untangled a Gordian knot of wires and cords, or seen your 2-year-old sucking on
your laptop charger, you understand the appeal of wireless charging.
Until recently, however, there weren't alternatives to
charging through bulky wires and cords. But as wireless charging becomes more
advanced, it may be used to power a wide variety of things other than phones or
watches, such as lamps or even electric buses, experts say
recharge your mobile phone.
HOW IT WORK
Wireless charging as a concept has been around since
inventor and physicist Nikola Tesla first concluded that
you could transfer power between two objects via an electromagnetic field, said
Ron Resnick, president of the Power Matters Alliance, which has a wireless
charging protocol.
Essentially, wireless charging uses a loop of coiled wires
around a bar magnet — which is known as an inductor. When an electric current
passes through the coiled wire, it creates an electromagnetic field around the
magnet, which can then be used to transfer a voltage, or charge, to something
nearby, Resnick said.
Most wireless power stations nowadays use a mat with an
inductor inside, although electric toothbrushes, for example, have long hadwireless charging embedded in their
bases. Because the strength of the electromagnetic field drops sharply with
distance (as the square of the distance between the objects), a device must be
fairly close to a charging station to get much power that way, Resnick said.
But although the basic concept of wireless charging has
been
understood for more than 100 years, scientists hadn't figured out a way to
efficiently transfer large amounts of power using this technique, Resnick said.
The amount of electric charge transferred is proportional to the number of
coils that can be looped around the tiny bar magnet, as well as the strength of the magnet. Until recently, wires and electronics couldn't be made
small enough and cheaply enough to make wireless charging feasible.
Improvements in
technology
But that's changed in
recent years.
"The cost to do it
has been really reduced," Resnick told Live Science. "To make it more
efficient, you have to have very, very flat coils of wire," enabling many loops of wire to be coiled around the tiny
bar magnet, he said.
What's more, wireless
power stations must charge only objects that are supposed to be charged, such
as a phone, and not, for example, a stray penny that falls on it, Resnick said.
To ensure that the wireless
charging station doesn't power an errant object, wireless power stations use
tiny transmitters that communicate with small receivers in a device, such as a
phone, said John Perzow, vice president of market development for the Wireless
Power Consortium, which created the Qi wireless charging technology.
In essence, the receiver
"talks" to the charging station, Perzow said. "If it says I'm an
authorized Qi receiver, it's OK to send me some power. I'll let you know how
much power I need, and as those needs change, I'll let you know. And when I'm
done charging, I'll let you know so you can go back to sleep," he told
Live Science.
Future uses
Nowadays, both the Power
Matters Alliance and Wireless Power Consortium have developed competing
protocols, or systems, for wirelessly charging devices. Existing systems are
used primarily tocharge
smartphones or smartwatches.
But wireless power may
soon extend to many more applications. For instance, electric buses in South
Korea can now be charged through a wireless platform, and IKEA is rolling out a
new line of furniture, including lamps
and tables, with built-in charging stations.
Other groups are
integrating wireless charging stations into public locations so that people
with so-called battery anxiety — that ever-present fear of running out of juice
— can charge their devices on the go, Perzow said.
As technology improves,
it may be possible to charge bigger and more power-hungry devices, such as
blenders or even vacuum cleaners, Resnick said.
And companies are already
designing systems in which wireless charging platforms in hotel rooms will be
able to not only charge phones, but also figure out when people are in their
rooms, sync their TV to the last spot in a movie they were watching on the
plane and sense whether the air conditioning should be cranked up, Perzow s
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