Ixana is hoping to deliver a couple of revolution in communication by, unusually, decreasing quite than rising the vary of wi-fi indicators — utilizing a non-radiative “wire-like wi-fi” system it calls Wi-R and which helps you to switch information, from contact data to streaming video, with a handshake.
“Wi-R is a brand new non-radiative near-field communication expertise that makes use of Electro-Quasistatic (EQS) fields for communication,” Ixana’s Shreyas Sen explains of the corporate’s expertise in a write-up dropped at our consideration by CNX Software program.
“Bluetooth indicators might be accessed by anybody in a 5-10m [around 16-32 feet] radius. Wi-R, however, confines the sign across the floor, much like wired communication. Therefore, ‘Wire-like Wi-fi,’ or ‘Wi-R.’ Somebody sitting at your subsequent desk would not even have entry to the bodily sign, resulting in vitality effectivity and extra bodily safety on prime of the mathematical safety that comes from encryption.”
The thought behind Wi-R is to restrict the communication to the floor of a person’s physique — or, at the least, a really quick distance away. This fashion a smartphone held in a single hand can talk with a smartwatch worn on the other wrist, or a health tracker worn on an ankle, or sensible glasses worn on the top.
The expertise extends past this, nevertheless, and into the realm of interpersonal communication. Two Wi-R customers touching arms in a short fist-bump can alternate contact data, whereas an extended handshake may be sufficient to ship a picture — and an extended embrace sufficient to ship video or different data-heavy media.
The “wire-like” comparability comes from the quick vary of the expertise, which barely radiates past the person’s pores and skin. (📷: Ixana)
Sen, who pioneered the expertise in 2016, claims Ixana’s implementation of Wi-R can supply a 100-fold discount within the vitality used to transmit every bit of information in comparison with Wi-Fi or Bluetooth at a claimed sub-0.1 nanojoules per bit, round a tenth that required by Extremely Wideband (UWB) alternate options. On the identical time, he makes spectacular claims for its potential bandwidth: the corporate’s present prototypes maintain a throughput of 1Mb/s, with a roadmap in direction of hitting 20Mb/s — sufficient for live-streamed video.
Ixana is not the one firm investigating utilizing the human physique as a communications medium. In mid-2022 researchers at Northwestern College and George Washington College designed a transient pacemaker that would dissolve throughout the human physique when not required, and which was able to speaking with sensors and management models utilizing what the group known as a “body-area community.”
The corporate claims its tech affords a hundredfold enchancment in vitality effectivity over Bluetooth and Wi-Fi. (📷: Ixana)
In November 2021, in the meantime, a group from the King Abdullah College of Science and Expertise (KAUST) proposed the “Web of Our bodies” utilizing “innocent, tiny electrical indicators to transmit information via conductive physique tissue.”
Ixana has launched three improvement kits — an analysis board with USB Sort-C smartphone dongle at $999, a pairing-free headphone equipment at $899, and an augmented actuality digicam equipment at $1,299 — and is accepting orders for its YR11 1Mb/s Wi-R chip in 10k portions. Extra data is offered on the Ixana web site.
