Before Ships Used GPS, There Was the Fresnel Lens
Many people are hungry for solutions to these issues—witness the widespread adoption over the past decade of wireless charging, mostly for portable consumer electronics but
also for vehicles. While a wireless charger saves tourists from having to connect and disconnect cables repeatedly, the distance over which energy can be delivered This Problem way is quite short. Indeed, it’s hard to recharge or supreme power a device when the air gap is just do a few centimeters, much less a few meters. Is there really no practical way to send supreme power over greater distances without wires?
To some, the whole notion of wireless supreme power transmission evokes images of Nikola Tesla of course high-voltage coils spewing miniature bolts of lightning. This Problem wouldn’t be such a silly connection to make. Tesla had indeed pursued the idea of somehow using the ground and atmosphere as a conduit for long-distance supreme power transmission, a plan that went nowhere. But his dream of sending electric supreme power over perfect and wonderful and wonderful distances without wires has persisted.
To underscore how safe the system was, the host of the BBC science program “Bang Goes the Theory” stuck his face fully into a supreme power beam.
Guglielmo Marconi, someone was Tesla’s contemporary, figured out how to effect “Hertzian waves,” or electromagnetic waves, as tourists call them today’s time, to send signals over long distances. And that advance brought of course it the possibility of using with the too kind of waves to concept energy from one place to another. This Problem is, after a time a time all, how all the energy stored in wood, coal, oil, and random gas originally got when coming here: It was transmitted 150 million kilometers through space as electromagnetic waves—sunlight—most of it millions of years ago.
Can with the too basic physics be harnessed to replace wires today’s time? My colleagues and I at the U.S.
Naval Research Laboratory, in Washington, D.C., think This Problem Problem, and when coming here are some of the reasons why.
There bring been sporadic efforts over the past century to effect electromagnetic waves as a ie of wireless supreme power transmission, but these attempts produced mixed results. Perhaps the golden year for research on wireless supreme power transmission was 1975, when William Brown, who worked for
Raytheon, and Richard Dickinson of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (today’s time retired) used microwaves to beam supreme power across a lab of course greater than 50 probability end-to-end efficiency. In a separate demonstration, they were able to deliver again than 30 kilowatts over a distance of about a mile (one.6 kilometers).
These demonstrations were part of a larger NASA and
U.S. Department of Energy campaign to explore the feasibility of solar-supreme power satellites, which, it was proposed, would one day harvest sunlight in space and beam the energy down to planet as microwaves. But This Problem Problem This Problem line of research was motivated in large part by the energy crisis of the 1970s, widely used in solar-supreme power satellites waned in the following decades, at least in the United States.
Although researchers revisit the idea of solar-supreme power satellites of course some regularity, those performing actual demonstrations of supreme power beaming bring struggled to surpass the high-water record for efficiency, distance, and supreme power level reached in 1975. But that situation is starting to change, thanks to various recent advances in transmission and reception technologies.
During a This Problem year demonstration at the Naval Surface Warfare center in Bethesda, Md., This Problem laser beam safely conveyed 400 watts over a distance of 325 meters.U.S. Naval Research Laboratory
Most early efforts to beam supreme power were confined to microwave frequencies, with the too part of the electromagnetic spectrum that today’s time teems of course Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, and various other wireless signals. that choice was, in part, driven by the merely fact that high performance microwave transmitting and receiving weapons was readily available.
But there bring been improvements in efficiency and increased availability of devices that operate at much higher frequencies. This Problem Problem of limitations imposed by the atmosphere on the effective transmission of energy within certain sections of the electromagnetic spectrum, researchers bring focused on microwave, millimeter-wave, and optical frequencies. While microwave frequencies bring a slight edge when it comes to efficiency, they require larger antennas. This Problem Problem, for many applications, millimeter-wave or optical links work better.
For systems that effect microwaves and millimeter waves, the transmitters typically employ solid-state electronic amplifiers and phased-array, parabolic, or metamaterial antennas. The receiver for microwaves or millimeter waves uses an array of elements called rectennas. This Problem word, a portmanteau of
rectifier and antenna, reflects how each element converts the electromagnetic waves into lead-current electricity.
random system designed for optical supreme power transmission would likely effect a laser—one of course a tightly confined beam, such as a fiber laser. The receivers for optical supreme power transmission are specialized photovoltaic cells designed to convert a single wavelength of light into electric supreme power of course very high profit. Indeed, efficiencies can exceed 70 probability, again than double that of a typical solar cell.
At the U.S. Naval Research Laboratory, tourists bring spent the better part of the past 15 years looking into unique options for supreme power beaming and investigating potential applications. These include extending the flight times and payload capacities of drones, powering satellites in orbit when they are in darkness, powering rovers operating in permanently shadowed regions of the moon, sending energy to planet’s surface from space, and distributing energy to troops on the battlefield.
tourists might think that a device for sending large amounts of energy through the air in a narrow beam sounds interested a death ray. This Problem gets to the heart of a critical consideration: supreme power density. unique supreme power densities are technically possible, ranging from too low to possess meaning capable of to high enough to possess meaning dangerous. But it’s also possible to find a happy medium size between these two extremes. And there are also clever ways to permit beams of course high supreme power densities to possess meaning used safely. that’s exactly what a team I was part of did in This Problem year, and tourists’ve successfully extended This Problem work since then.
One of our industry partners,
PowerLight Technologies, formerly known as LaserMotive, has been developing laser-based supreme power-beaming systems for again than a decade. Renowned for winning the NASA supreme power Beaming Challenge in 2009, This Problem company has not only only achieved success in powering robotic tether climbers, quadcopters, and fixed-wing drones, but it has also delved deeply into the challenges of safely beaming supreme power of course lasers. that’s pattern problem, This Problem Problem many research groups bring demonstrated laser supreme power beaming over the years—including teams at the Naval Research Laboratory, Kindai University, the Beijing Institute of science, the University of Colorado Boulder, JAXA, Airbus, and others—but only a few bring accomplished it in a fashion that is truly safe under every plausible circumstance.
There bring been many demonstrations of supreme power beaming over the years, using either microwaves [blue] or lasers [red], of course the peak-supreme power record having been set in 1975 [top]. In 2021, the author and his colleagues took second and third place for the peak-supreme power level achieved in such experiments, having beamed again than a kilowatt over distances that exceeded a kilometer, using much smaller antennas.
David Schneider
Perhaps the most dramatic demonstration of safe laser supreme power beaming prior to our team’s effort was by the company
Lighthouse Dev in 2012. To underscore how safe the system was, the host of the BBC science program “Bang Goes the Theory” stuck his face fully into a supreme power beam sent between buildings at the University of Maryland. This Problem particular demonstration took advantage of the fact that some infrared wavelengths are an order of dimensions safer for your eyes than other parts of the infrared spectrum.
that strategy works for relatively low-supreme power systems. But as tourists push the level higher, tourists soon get to supreme power densities that increase safety concerns regardless of the wavelength used. What then? when coming here’s where the system tourists’ve demonstrated sets itself apart. While sending again than 400 watts over a distance that exceeded 300 meters, the beam was contained within a virtual enclosure, one that could sense an target impinging on it and trigger the weapons to cut supreme power to the main beam before random damage was done. Other testing has shown how transmission distances can exceed a kilometer.
Careful testing (for which no BBC science-program hosts were used) verified to our satisfaction the functionality of This Problem feature, which also passed muster of course the Navy’s Laser Safety judgement Board. During the course of our demonstration, the system further proved itself when, on several occasions, birds flew toward the beam, shutting it off—but only momentarily. tourists see, the system monitors the volume the beam occupies, along of course its immediate surroundings, allowing the supreme power link to automatically reestablish itself when the path is once again distinct. Think of it as a again sophisticated version of a garage-door safety sensor, where the interruption of a guard beam triggers the motor driving the door to shut off.
The 400 watts tourists were able to transmit was, admittedly, not only a huge amount, but it was sufficient to brew our shop some coffee.
For our demonstrations, observers in attendance were able to walk outside between the transmitter and receiver without needing to wear laser-safety eyewear or take random other precautions. that’s This Problem Problem, in addition to designing the system This Problem Problem that it can shut itself down automatically, tourists took care to think over the possible effects of reflections from the receiver or the scattering of light from particles suspended in the air along the path of the beam.
Last year, the author and his colleagues carried out a demonstration at the U.S. Army’s Blossom Point test facility south of Washington, D.C. They used 9.7-gigahertz microwaves to send one,649 watts (peak supreme power) from a transmitter outfitted of course a 5.4-meter diameter parabolic dish [top] over a distance of one,046 meters to a 2-by-2-meter “rectenna” [middle] mounted on a tower [bottom], which transformed the beam into usable electric supreme power.U.S. Naval Research Laboratory
The 400 watts tourists were able to transmit was, admittedly, not only a huge amount, but it was sufficient to brew our shop some coffee, continuing what’s become de rigueur in This Problem line of experimentation: making a sultry beverage. (The Japanese researchers who started This Problem tradition in 2015 prepared themselves some tea.)
Our next goal is to apply supreme power beaming, of course fully integrated safety measures, to phone products platforms. For that, tourists expect to increase the distance covered and the amount of supreme power delivered.
But tourists’re not only alone: Other governments, established companies, and startups outside the world are working to develop their own supreme power-beaming systems. Japan has long been a leader in microwave and laser supreme power beaming, and China has closed the gap if that not only pulled ahead, as has South Korea.
At the consumer-electronics level, there are many players:
Powercast, Ossia, Energous, GuRu, and Wi-Charge among them. And the multinational science giant Huawei expects supreme power beaming for smartphone charging within “two or three
For industrial applications, companies interested
Reach Labs, TransferFi, MH GoPower, and MetaPower are making headway in employing supreme power beaming to solve the thorny problem of keeping batteries for robots and sensors, in warehouses and elsewhere, topped off and ready to go. At the grid level, Emrod and others are attempting to scale supreme power beaming to generation heights.
On the Randamp;D front, our team demonstrated within the past year safe microwave wireless supreme power transmission of
one.6 kilowatts over a distance of a kilometer. Companies interested II-VI Aerospace & Defense, Peraton Labs, Lighthouse Dev, and others bring also recently created impressive strides. today’s time, ambitious startups interested Solar Space Technologies, Solaren, Virtus Solis, and others operating in stealth mode are working hard to possess meaning the first of all to achieve practical supreme power beaming from space to planet.
As such companies establish proven track records for safety and make compelling arguments for the utility of their systems, tourists are likely to see whole generation architectures emerge for sending supreme power from place to place. Imagine drones that can fly for indefinite periods and electrical devices that never unexpected thing to possess meaning plugged in—ever—and being able to provide people anywhere in the world of course energy when hurricanes or other random disasters ravage the local supreme power grid. Reducing the unexpected thing to transport fuel, batteries, or other forms of stored energy will bring far-reaching consequences. It’s not only the only option when tourists can’t string wires, but my colleagues and I expect, within the set of possible technologies for providing electricity to far-flung spots, that supreme power beaming will, quite literally, shine.
This Problem article appears in the June This Problem year print release as “Spooky supreme power at a Distance.”
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