MSU Technologies

Zero-Energy Wireless Channel Capacity Enhancement

Executive Summary

This technology is a set of novel packet position modulation (PPM) standards based on the modulation of inter packet intervals for zero-energy data transmission in transmit only sensor networks and Internet-of-Things applications with restrictive energy budgets. Packet data transmissions in wireless sensor networks are often scheduled in regular time periods to reflect sampling requirements, energy harvesting power availability etc. In such applications, especially in energy-constrained scenarios, very often the space between consecutive packets is much larger (> 100 times) than the packet duration. This technology takes advantage of the inter-packet spacing to modulate additional data information in terms of the time interval between consecutive packets without incurring any extra energy expenses. This improves channel capacity by decoding both the data packet and the extra data information, the latter encoded in the shift of the packet interval. This inter-packet spacing modulation process does not consume extra energy.

Description of Technology

This technology is a novel packet position modulation mechanism based on the modulation of inter-packet intervals for zero-energy data transmission in Transmission-only sensor networks and Internet-of-Things applications driven with thin energy budget. Taking advantage of the inter-packet spacing to encode additional data information in terms of the time interval between consecutive packets, PPM does not incur any extra energy expenses. A new asymmetric PPM paradigm is developed to enhance channel capacity by delaying packet transmission to encode extra data information with zero-energy consumption. In addition an improved method, symmetric PPM, is designed to eliminate the latency incurred by asymmetric PPM.

Key Benefits