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"New cell phone antenna tech to drastically reduce power use"

Call me rather skeptical:

(From

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, December 19th, 2008...)

"A new wireless antenna technology developed by Atif Shamim, an engineering student at Canada's Carleton University, is claimed to be able to reduce a mobile phone's antenna power consumption by nearly 92%. The key piece of the technology involves disconnecting a cell phone's antenna from the rest of the electronic components in the device. In order to separate the antenna from the rest of the phone, Shamim's system uses very short range wireless transmitting micro-antennas within the chip design to handle the communications. Shamim says that by insulating the antenna from the rest of the devices that it would normally be wired to, there is no chance for the antenna's transmission power to be drained, thus lowering the overall burden a cell phone places on its battery.

Shamim has already filed for patents to protect his invention."

Reply to
Joel Koltner
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Sno-o-o-o-o-ort ;-)

...Jim Thompson

--
| James E.Thompson, P.E.                           |    mens     |
| Analog Innovations, Inc.                         |     et      |
| Analog/Mixed-Signal ASIC\'s and Discrete Systems  |    manus    |
| Phoenix, Arizona  85048    Skype: Contacts Only  |             |
| Voice:(480)460-2350  Fax: Available upon request |  Brass Rat  |
| E-mail Icon at http://www.analog-innovations.com |    1962     |
             
 I love to cook with wine     Sometimes I even put it in the food
Reply to
Jim Thompson

"Jim Thompson" wrote in message news: snipped-for-privacy@4ax.com...

Found more information:

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"As far as his incredible technology was concerned, Mr. Shamim declared that "This has not been tried before - that the circuits are connected to the antenna wirelessly. They've been connected through wires and a bunch of other components. That's where the power gets lost."

Hmm... I recall a lecture at school comparing the efficiency (energy per bit) of signalling over copper vs. signalling wirelessly, and I specifically remember a graph where wireless does win out if you go over long enough distances (due to power dropping as 1/r^2 rather than exp(-r) ), but the crossover point was many orders of magnitudes greater than the millimeters-ballpark distances found in a cell phone... unless he intends to signal at a really high frequency which... oh, hey, that's just using optical interconnects between ICs, and while that's an active and promising area, the cost is still just not competetive yet except for very high-speed applications.

Oooh, video here... on some previous work the fellow did:

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I'm still quite skeptical. He sounds like a smart enough fellow, but I've yet to see anything that sounds like there's anything really new here...

---Joel

Reply to
Joel Koltner

On a sunny day (Mon, 22 Dec 2008 10:43:09 -0800) it happened "Joel Koltner" wrote in :

I have read a bit further, and what he seems to have done is reduce the losses of the connection between chip and antenna, during transmit, by about 35 mW, an insignificant amount, and surely not resulting in a much longer battery life, as output power is about 2 W? The guys play the press, the press is clueless in this case, the victim of their play, they get attention... Same as the MIT(!) wireless power transfer over large distances, seems MIT has finally gotten rid of that coocoo idea, and now Intel is stuck with it. hehe

Reply to
Jan Panteltje

I just had a cell phone that had a magical pull out antenna to reduce loses and get better reception.

greg

Reply to
GregS

I had a couple phones apart this year drying them out after dunking. Has anybody ever used those external antenna ports ? I guess thats what they are for external antennas ?

greg

Reply to
GregS

It says antenna power consumption. Antennas don't consume power do they?

I suppose at a stretch you could describe losses in the antenna and feeder as consumed power. Given the constraints of fitting an antenna and everything else inside a mobile phone I could believe some feeder/antenna efficiency trade offs were made and a 92% reduction in losses is possible.

It only takes an idiot journo to incorrectly translate a 92% reduction in losses into a 92% reduction in power requirement and 12 x improvement in battery life.

Reply to
nospam

On a sunny day (Mon, 22 Dec 2008 20:15:24 GMT) it happened snipped-for-privacy@zekfrivolous.com (GregS) wrote in :

I tried using the one on my Alcatel, and then the reception got worse. After reading the manual I found it said: Do not touch connector, may damage phone.

Probably the static killed an input amp.... It is still usable as a good calendar though. Still works with strong signal, but not here out miles away from the nearest tower. So... be careful. There exist clamp on antenna extenders that do not make physical contact with the electronics.

Reply to
Jan Panteltje

Some years ago I ended up using the external antenna port on a cell phone I had... I had moved to a section of town where cell reception was generally weak and absolutely unusable inside the duplex I was renting. (I put up a small antenna on the roof and ran a coax cable into the bedroom...)

I think those ports were added at first mostly to facilitate testing the phones before end-users received them, and someone realized that once the connector was paid for, letting the end-user plug in an external antenna was pretty much a "free feature," even if very people ever actually used them.

Reply to
Joel Koltner

I suspect you're correct. Heck, I can make significant reductions in my own matching-network designs if they don't have to fit in the teeny-tiny spaces that people expect radios to occupy these days...

Yep. And as someone else pointed out, if the antenna losses are only a tiny percentage of total losses in the phone, even completely eliminating them doesn't make much of a noticeable battery life improvement.

Reply to
Joel Koltner

What a bunch of excrement.

--
http://webpages.charter.net/jamie_5"
Reply to
Jamie

I discovered that if you remove the wires from the battery in nearly any device, the battery life is drastically extended!

--
Joe Leikhim K4SAT
"The RFI-EMI-GUY"©

"Treason doth never prosper: what\'s the reason?
For if it prosper, none dare call it treason."

"Follow The Money"  ;-P
Reply to
RFI-EMI-GUY

ing

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=A0 =A0 ...Jim Thompson

=A0 | =A0 =A0mens =A0 =A0 |

=A0 | =A0 =A0 et =A0 =A0 =A0|

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He should spend his time perfecting the electric vagina, then start working on the LED breast implants.

Reply to
miso

You're a chip designer so maybe you can answer... What if they use oxygen-free micro antennas in the chip? Inquiring minds want to know!

Ed

Reply to
ehsjr

[snip]

That will only work if the antennas are also "green team" certified ;-)

...Jim Thompson

--
| James E.Thompson, P.E.                           |    mens     |
| Analog Innovations, Inc.                         |     et      |
| Analog/Mixed-Signal ASIC\'s and Discrete Systems  |    manus    |
| Phoenix, Arizona  85048    Skype: Contacts Only  |             |
| Voice:(480)460-2350  Fax: Available upon request |  Brass Rat  |
| E-mail Icon at http://www.analog-innovations.com |    1962     |
             
 I love to cook with wine     Sometimes I even put it in the food
Reply to
Jim Thompson

How inefficient are antennas anyway?

The only loss mechanism I can see that is under control of the antenna designer is the ohmic losses involved in the radiator currents themselves. Parasitic losses due to nearby conductors (like the metal plate and numerous body piercings in the head of the operator) are beyond the designers control. From my days tinkering with antennas, these represent a significant portion of the system losses.

--
Paul Hovnanian     mailto:Paul@Hovnanian.com
------------------------------------------------------------------
Have a pleasant Terran revolution.
Reply to
Paul Hovnanian P.E.

The better hands-free kits in cars use the antenna port to connect an exterior antenna.

--
Failure does not prove something is impossible, failure simply
indicates you are not using the right tools...
                     "If it doesn\'t fit, use a bigger hammer!"
--------------------------------------------------------------
Reply to
Nico Coesel

there was just a discussion of this over on the ham radio microwave mail list. It seems many fractile antennas become , in effect, a short stub that just excites a tuned reflector to resonance, making the antenna current in the modeling super low, yet the TX spends all its time exciting a short stub to nowheresville. Its a modeling software glitch, not a patent!

Steve Roberts

Reply to
osr

With cell phone antennas a lot of human-body modelling is done not only to predict and then avoid having your head detune the antenna, but also to minimize the radiation entering your head in the first place (both to meet SAR requirements and to just not waste power).

I don't have a good feel for the efficiency of a typical cell phone antenna, although I wouldn't be surprised if it's not much more than 60-80% efficient -- I could see

Reply to
Joel Koltner

Could you provide a link to this particular mailing list please, Steve?

Thanks,

---Joel

Reply to
Joel Koltner

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