Using the human body as an antenna, the team of researchers has developed a low-cost, innovative way to harvest waste energy from Visible Light Communication (VLC), a wireless version of fibre optics that uses flashes of light to transmit information.
This waste energy collected can then be recycled to power an array of wearable devices, or even, perhaps, larger electronics.
“VLC is quite simple and interesting,” said Jie Xiong, professor of information and computer sciences at UMass Amherst. “Instead of using radio signals to send information wirelessly, it uses the light from LEDs that can turn on and off, up to one million times per second.”
Part of the appeal of VLC is that the infrastructure is already everywhere. Homes, vehicles, streetlights and offices are all lit by LED bulbs, which could also be transmitting data. As such, this new technology could be used to power a huge range of electronics that people interact with daily.
“Anything with...