Braidio - new technology that lets mobile devices share power

A research team is all set to give the world a new invention by using simple Bluetooth and Radio technology. Computer science researchers have introduced a new radio technology that allows small mobile devices to take advantage of battery power in larger devices nearby for communication.

The researchers from University of Massachusetts at Amherst, have come up with the new technology where the devices can be made more thinner and lighter as their new device will help in getting battery power.

According to Science Daily, a research led by Professor Deepak Ganesan and his graduate students in the College of Information and Computer Sciences, Pan Hu, Pengyu Zhang and Mohammad Rostami have designed a prototype radio that could help to extend the life of batteries in small devices such as smart watches and fitness trackers. A paper presented by researchers at Association for Computing Machinery's special interest group on data communication (SIGCOMM) conference in Florianopolis, Brazil, described clearly about their research to extend the life of batteries in small devices with the technique of "Energy Offload".

Braidio - The system works like a braid of radios, thus the name.

Professor Ganesan explains that larger the device, larger the capacity of the battery and smaller the device smaller is the capacity of the battery. A laptop's battery is thousand times larger than the fitness tracker battery, a hundred times larger than in a smartwatch, and 10 times larger than in a cell phone. However, these devices can't take advantage of the differences. For example, Ganesan says, "the battery on your smart watch cannot survive longer by taking advantage of the higher battery level on your smartphone."

"We take for granted the ability to offload storage and computation from our relatively limited personal computers to the resource-rich cloud," he adds. "In the same vein, it makes sense that devices should also be able to offload how much power they consume for communication to devices that have more energy."

"Braidio operates like a standard Bluetooth radio when a device has sufficient energy, but operates like RFID when energy is low, offloading energy use to a device with a larger battery when needed. So, when a smartwatch and smartphone are equipped with Braidios, they can work together to proportionally share the energy consumed for communication" he added.

According to Daily Mail, Pan Hu, a graduate student in the College of Information and Computer Sciences said "to be clear, our results only cover the cost of communication or transmitting data."

He also added "If a radio is transmitting from a camera that consumes hundreds of milliwatts while using its sensors, clearly the sensors may dominate totally power consumption and reduce the benefits of optimizing the radio."

Professor Ganesan claims that this technology will be very useful in coming feature and this feature will be helpful in making devices thinner and lighter. He also said "Wearable devices are often bulky due to large batteries needed for adequate battery life, perhaps such energy offload