A radio’s signal strength is strongly related to its size; this means that increasingly miniaturised devices with limited space for antennas struggle to maintain reliable communication with other devices. This could prove a roadblock in the maturation of the IoT, as smaller devices suffer from poor signal.
A team of researchers from CSAIL has presented a system for improving radio signal [PDF], which does not use signal amplification or emit any power of its own.
Rather than using monolithic antennas, the system contains more than 3,000 tiny wireless antennas attached to a surface. These antennae - which can allow a signal to pass through or be reflected - are rearranged to maximise reception via an optimisation algorithm which relies on signal strength measurements from a receiver. 'RFocus' acts as a beam-forming controller, meaning that it is unnecessary to rely on radio transmitters and receiving devices to manage this activity (which is increasingly...