New chip design cuts wireless power use by 99%, opens door to year-long battery devices
Researchers have cracked a decades-old problem in radio engineering: generating stable wireless signals without draining batteries. The SharpPeak design uses tunnel diodes to transmit data 1 km away on just 175 microwatts—a breakthrough that could enable sensors and devices to run for months or years on a single charge, transforming IoT deployments and remote monitoring.
Originaltitel: SharpPeak: Unlocking the True Potential of Tunnel Diodes for Low-Power Long-Range Communication
The need for generating radio signals with a high frequency stability and very low phase noise is a demanding requirement in communication systems. In low-power designs, such high-frequency signal generation is often the main source of power consumption, which necessitates low-power alternatives. Although tunnel diodes can generate high-frequency signals at low power, the generated signal is frequency unstable with high phase noise and unwanted harmonics. State-of-the-art address these limitations through injection locking, which requires an external signal generator that significantly increases the overall system power consumption. We present SharpPeak, a low-power long-range transmitter design that achieves high frequency stability using tunnel diodes without relying on external injection signals. This design lowers both system power and transmitter complexity, while improving frequency stability, phase noise, and frequency drifts. SharpPeak achieves high (370 kbps) data rates and long (1 km) communication range with under 175 μW power consumption at the RF front-end, advancing the state-of-the-art in energy-efficient communication systems. We believe that this work is a significant advancement in the development of a new generation of low-power communication systems.