27 December 2008

Student Invented System
That Increases Battery Life Up To 12x

Yesterday Electronics Ph.D. student Atif Shamim won the overall Best Paper Award at the European Wireless Technology Conference for an amazing new invention to reduce power consumption of the 'power-sucking' device and increase battery life.

He has built a prototype that extends the battery life of portable gadgets up to 12 times, by getting rid of all the wires used to connect the electronic circuits with the antenna.

The invention involves a packaging technique to connect the antenna with the circuits via a wireless connection between a micro-antenna embedded within the circuits on the chip.

“This has not been tried before — that the circuits are connected to the antenna wirelessly. They’ve been connected through wires and a bunch of other components. That’s where the power gets lost,” Mr. Shamim said.

He estimates his module consumes 12 times less power than the traditional, wired-transmitter module. It is also much simpler in design, lowering the overall cost of any hand-held device, he said.

The judges at the European wireless conference lauded Carleton students’ paper for the “excellent integration of system design, material sciences and electromagnetic antenna design.” They also said the innovation is “highly relevant, with large potential for commercialization.”

Mr. Shamim has filed patent applications in the U.S. and in Canada, in the knowledge consumers continue to gripe about the short lifespan of the iPhone battery.

Earlier this year, the Ottawa Centre for Research and Innovation honoured Mr. Shamim and Mr. Arsalan as student researchers of the year for their work in the field of wireless biomedical sensors. Also honoured was University of Ottawa student David Nadeau, for his contribution to the “more intelligent online search engine,” yooname.com