A new chip developed by researchers from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology will have ample power to broadcast Bluetooth and Wi-Fi signals, but it will preserve its energy stores at 100 times the rate as current sensors.
Anantha Chandrakasan, a professor in electrical engineering at MIT, said his team worked to cut down on the amount of power the sensors leaked while they were on standby, idly awaiting an event to trigger them.
"When it's on, you want to be as efficient as possible," said Chandrakasan. "And when it's off, you want to really cut off the off-state power, the leakage power."
Contemporary circuits leak power through their leads, even when no positive charge is applied. The MIT team's sensors use negative charges to prevent electronics from leaking across their semiconductors during idle periods.
The new sensor circuitry has to use a small amount of power in order to stop the leakage of electrons, but the returns on that minute expenditure appear to be well worth it. In a prototype, developed with the backing of Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company's research program, the new sensor circuitry expended about 20 picowatts of power to prevent the leakage of approximately 10,000 picowatts.
The MIT team's Internet of Things (IoT) sensor, due for debut at the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers' International Solid-State Circuits Conference, arrives just as an ABI Research report on connected devices forecast a fourfold increase of device connections by 2020. The report, commissioned by Verizon, forecast approximately 5.4 billion device connections worldwide by 2020.
The report noted that the world's 14 largest automakers all have a road map for the development of connected cars, and these manufacturers account for about 80 percent of the global market for automobile.
The report also said Verizon and ABI Research expect 13 million smart health products to move into workplaces by 2020. The pair also predict smart infrastructure will play a critical role in companies' search for cities in which to open new facilities or invest in the expansion of existing locations.
With innovators such as the MIT team continuing to pave the way for an exponentially more connected world, the Verizon report concluded that the biggest challenge for the proliferation of IoT won't be the physical limitation of the hardware. The biggest hurdle facing the IoT revolution will be security.
While IoT adoption in the enterprise is low and stands at an estimate of about 10 percent usage, Verizon believes companies are monitoring early adopters before committing to road maps that include connected devices. The industry needs better standards in order to bring enterprises on board, according to Mark Bartolomeo, vice president of IoT Connected Solutions at Verizon.
"As machine-to-machine technology adoption continues to move downstream with millions of endpoints connected, it will change how we see cybersecurity and privacy," said Bartolomeo. "Our role is to help key decision makers tackle complexities, like security, head on by encouraging a more proactive posture in order to create value for their organizations while reducing potential risk."
