Wireless Power Hotspot that Charges All of Your Devices

• Main Authors: Shi, Lixin (Contributor), Katabi, Dina (Contributor), Kabelac, Zachary E. (Contributor), Perreault, David J. (Contributor)
• Other Authors: Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science (Contributor)
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Association for Computing Machinery (ACM), 2015-09-30T12:58:32Z.
• Subjects: Article
• Online Access: Get fulltext

 Each year, consumers carry an increasing number of gadgets on their person: mobile phones, tablets, smartwatches, etc. As a result, users must remember to recharge each device, every day. Wireless charging promises to free users from this burden, allowing devices to remain permanently unplugged. Today's wireless charging, however, is either limited to a single device, or is highly cumbersome, requiring the user to remove all of her wearable and handheld gadgets and place them on a charging pad. This paper introduces MultiSpot, a new wireless charging technology that can charge multiple devices, even as the user is wearing them or carrying them in her pocket. A MultiSpot charger acts as an access point for wireless power. When a user enters the vicinity of the MultiSpot charger, all of her gadgets start to charge automatically. We have prototyped MultiSpot and evaluated it using off-the-shelf mobile phones, smartwatches, and tablets. Our results show that MultiSpot can charge 6 devices at distances of up to 50cm.