Passive IoT technology can indeed cover hundreds of billions of IoT nodes, and research on passive IoT has been ongoing.
The cellular network's support for the Internet of Things is mainly divided into three different speed gears, namely, high-speed Internet of Things, medium-speed Internet of Things, and narrow-band Internet of Things.
Among them, the high-speed Internet of Things is mainly carried by 4G Cat.4+ and 5G eMBB;
At present, the medium-speed Internet of Things is mainly carried by 4G Cat.1;
Narrowband IoT is mainly carried by NB-IoT.
NB-IoT for low-speed Internet of Things is facing nearly tens of billions of low-power Internet of Things nodes. The scale of Internet of Things connections that can be brought about by medium-speed and high-speed cellular networks is much lower than that of low-speed Internet of Things.
Therefore, relying on these 3 different speed gears of cellular network technology can only support 10 billion-level Internet of Things connections.
On the basis of the above three types of cellular IoT, passive IoT is the main source of hundreds of billions of IoT connections. For example, it is obviously unrealistic to use NB-IoT-like solutions for each of the tens of billions of clothing, shoes, hats, and express parcels every year, and a passive IoT solution is needed.
The 5G network also needs to be continuously enhanced to better support the Internet of Things and to meet the demand for carrying hundreds of billions of connections in the future. This requires 5G networks to support IoT types with different speed gears to match the differentiated needs of the industry.
However, to realize the support for passive IoT on the 5G cellular network, it is necessary to extend the 5G connection capability to a larger physical world.
From the birth of the Internet of Things to the present, people have increasingly experienced the high efficiency brought by technology to interconnect everything. RFID electronic tags are an important part of Internet of Things technology. RFID (Radio Frequency Identification) is commonly known as [electronic tags].
It is a non-contact automatic identification technology, which automatically recognizes the target object and obtains related data through radio frequency signals. The identification work does not require manual intervention. The main function is to write and read data.
It consists of tags, readers, data transmission, and processing systems. According to whether it is equipped with a battery, electronic tags are divided into two types: active and passive.
Passive RFID tags, known as passive RFID tags, can convert part of the microwave energy into DC power for their own operations after receiving the microwave signal announced by the reader.
When the passive RFID tag approaches the RFID reader, the antenna of the passive RFID tag converts the received electromagnetic wave energy into electrical energy, activates the chip in the RFID tag, and sends the data in the RFID chip.
Of course, RFID itself has some limitations, such as short transmission distance and high dependence on dedicated readers. If the cellular network can support passive IoT, it will break these limitations and expand the cellular network's support for the Internet of Things.
Passive Internet of Things, that is, the nodes themselves are not equipped with or do not mainly rely on power equipment such as batteries, but obtain energy from the environment to support data perception, transmission, and distributed computing.
With the rapid development of the Internet of Things technology, many of these devices can only be powered by batteries due to environmental and cost factors, and the power consumption of traditional radio frequency integrated circuits is not low. The batteries need to be replaced every year, resulting in higher maintenance costs.
Therefore, in order to further popularize the Internet of Things, the industry needs ultra-low power consumption radio frequency circuits.
In recent years, the industry has been researching and investing in passive IoT technologies.
In the future Internet of Things, network nodes can be battery-free, that is, the nodes themselves are not equipped with or do not mainly rely on power equipment such as batteries, but obtain energy from the environment to support data perception, transmission, and distributed computing.
In a passive transmission network, the energy of a node is not necessarily inherent in itself. The nodes can exchange energy wirelessly.
How to save energy and improve efficiency in the transmission and calculation process of nodes is no longer the first core task. How to use the current energy of the nodes to complete as many transmission and calculation tasks as possible has become the primary goal.
Whether it is a wired connection or even a button battery that is replaced from time to time, it is relatively easy to supply power to the sensor.
However, due to the long and wide deployment range of sensors in the Internet of Things, many applications that cannot provide power, require long-term monitoring, are difficult to replace batteries, or are flammable and explosive, etc., must use passive sensors to achieve measurement.
In wireless sensor network applications, due to a large number of nodes and the large distribution range, the battery replacement problem is also difficult to solve.
Therefore, passive sensors that can be self-powered have a wide range of application prospects and are also a hot research topic.
Passive sensors can effectively solve various problems caused by the use of batteries and power supplies, but they also face some technical problems that urgently need to be improved and optimized.
Passive sensors can effectively solve various problems caused by the use of batteries and power supplies, but they also face some technical problems that urgently need to be improved and optimized.
In the future, the development of low-power integrated electronic technology and advanced power management will greatly reduce the power consumption of micro-sensors; through new transducer design or application of new materials, energy conversion efficiency and power will be further improved; the combination of methods Will improve the ability to collect energy under different conditions.
It is foreseeable that passive sensors with various functions will show their talents in various fields in the era of the Internet of Things.
