Humans Will Be Used As Antennas For 6G Wireless Technology:
“Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.”
If we talk about wireless technology, people have not overcome the magic of 5G yet and researchers have come up with another wireless technology of 6G.
Global adoption of 5G wireless technology has just been started and researchers are already announcing the development of 6G technology. Previous wireless technologies have used waves as their antennas to transfer signals. But the study which is happening now by researchers from the University of Massachusetts Amherst, 6G may eventually use people as antennas for the transfer of signals.
In the future when the 6G will come to its final shape it may utilize Visible Light Communication (VLC) which can operate the function of a wireless substitute for fiber optics. If we talk about the ways of transferring data through fiber optics, then you will be shocked that fiber optics use incredibly tiny or delicate wires and transfer data on light flashes using exceedingly thin glass or strands.
Fiber optics is a huge technology that is used for the transmission of data traffic in the form of pulses of light over tiny optical fibers. If you talk about the size of these optical fibers, these fibers have a diameter just like the strand of human hair. They are most commonly made of pure silica. Cladding is the way that prevents these lights from escaping and traveling down the core of fibers.
The team which is working on this research that is UMass Amherst claims that they have developed a creative, budget-friendly method with the help of which VLC waste energy can be captured which makes use of the body as an antenna. The electronic gadgets which we can wear and the larger electronics can be powered by their technology that recycles waste energy.
At UMass Amherst, the professor who teaches information and computer science known as Jie Xiong said that “VLC is quite simple and interesting, 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”.
The main things which we use in our daily life like our houses, cars, and street lights are all lit by LED bulbs as a result of current technology, also they may be transferring data. The framework to use the VLC already exists and that’s the only reason which makes it so tempting for the future of wireless technologies.
The developer teams noticed that Visible Light Communication (VLC) systems mostly experience the leakage of energy because LED lights emit radio waves or even the side channel RF signals.
Researchers have experienced will all types of surfaces and thicknesses of wire. After resting the coil against anything like plastic, cardboard even mobile phones turned on and off, the author Minhao Cui tried to wrap the coil around the human body to check the results. And the results showed that the human body is actually the best medium for amplifying the coil’s ability to collect leaked RF energy. If we use just a bare coil it will collect less energy as compared to attaching the coil to a human body which collected up to 10 times more energy.
These results inspired the researchers to develop the bracelet+ which is a low-cost wearable device that is very effective in collecting power and they can even reach up to microwatts which is more than enough to monitor the on-body health sensors.
So in the end Xiong concluded that if we want to power future technology then we have to collect waste energy from all sorts of sources.
