ZeroIoT: Enabling the Battery-free Internet of Things

The IoT is revolutionizing domains such as healthcare, aerospace, critical infrastructure monitoring, and process control. Currently, however, most IoT devices are battery-powered and replacing batteries is labor-intensive and hence costly.

The most power-consuming task of typical IoT devices is communication; in particular, the generation of the radio waves. Backscatter solves this issue by outsourcing the generation of radio waves to external devices, reducing the power consumption for radio transmissions by orders of magnitude. Backscatter alone, even if combined with ambient energy harvesting, is not sufficient.

While these technologies have made significant progress, merely swapping batteries with a harvesting unit rarely works. As energy harvesting provides energy opportunistically, devices may run out of energy, shut down and lose their state. Intermittent computing solves this issue through a combination of techniques that allow applications to make progress despite energy scarcity.

ZeroIoT enables the battery-free IoT by advancing and combining backscatter and energy-driven intermittent computing. ZeroIoT targets two application domains. In healthcare, implanted devices will improve the diagnosis of Sarcopenia and Osteopenia and the monitoring of prosthetic implants. In civil engineering, we will provide novel means to perform remote displacement monitoring for embankment dams. To ensure industrial impact ZeroIoT has a carefully selected reference group.

More information about the project on the Swedish Foundation for Strategic Research website