̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge - Internet of Things

Lights could be the future of the internet and data transmission

Anonymous — Tue, 25 Jul 2023 14:38:40 +0000

New internet technologies are being rapidly refined, and LED-based communication links are expected to be used in services and scenarios including Light-fidelity (Li-Fi), underwater communications, moderate- to high-speed photonic connections and various ‘Internet of Things’ (IoT) devices.

A study, led by the Universities of Surrey and Cambridge and published in the journal Nature Photonics, has investigated how to release high-speed photonic sources using materials known as metal-halide perovskites. These semiconductors are studied with LEDs for their excellent optoelectronic properties and low-cost processing methods.

“IoT devices have the potential to add significant value to industry and the global economy,” said corresponding author Dr Wei Zhang from the ̽��ֱ�� of Surrey. “In this market, costs and compatibility are often prioritised over data transmission speed and scientists are looking for alternative ways to reduce energy consumption per bit and improve compactness while simultaneously working on improving the speed of data connection.

“In our study, we have shown how metal-halide perovskites could provide a cost-efficient and powerful solution to make LEDs which have enormous potential to increase their bandwidths into the gigahertz levels.

“Our investigations will accelerate the development of high-speed perovskite photodetectors and continuous wave-pumped perovskite lasers, opening up new avenues for advancements in optoelectronic technologies.”

“This is a significant step toward perovskite light sources for next-generation data communications,” said co-first author Hao Wang, a PhD candidate in Cambridge’s Department of Engineering. “It also paves the way for the integration of perovskites with micro-electronics platforms, presenting new opportunities for seamless integration and advancement in the field of data communications.”

̽��ֱ��project involved researchers from Oxford, Bath, Warwick, UCL, EMPA and UESTC.

Reference:
Aobo Ren, Hao Wang et al. ‘High-bandwidth perovskite photonic sources on silicon.’ Nature Photonics (2023). DOI: 10.1038/s41566-023-01242-9

For more information on energy-related research in Cambridge, please visit the Energy IRC, which brings together Cambridge’s research knowledge and expertise, in collaboration with global partners, to create solutions for a sustainable and resilient energy landscape for generations to come.

Adapted from a ̽��ֱ�� of Surrey press release.

Fast data transmission could be delivered in homes and offices through light emitting diode (LED) bulbs, complementing existing communication technologies and networks.

This is a significant step toward perovskite light sources for next-generation data communications

Hao Wang

Yaorusheng via Getty Images

Abstract colourful background

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Yes

Easy-to-make, ultra-low-power electronics could charge out of thin air

Anonymous — Tue, 13 Oct 2020 11:25:02 +0000

Electronics that consume tiny amounts of power are key for the development of the Internet of Things, in which everyday objects are connected to the internet. Many emerging technologies, from wearables to healthcare devices to smart homes and smart cities, need cost-effective transistors and electronic circuits that can function with minimal energy use.

Printed electronics are a simple and inexpensive way to manufacture electronics that could pave the way for low-cost electronic devices on unconventional substrates – such as clothes, plastic wrap or paper – and provide everyday objects with ‘intelligence’.

However, these devices need to operate with low energy and power consumption to be useful for real-world applications. Although printing techniques have advanced considerably, power consumption has remained a challenge – the different solutions available were too complex for commercial production.

Now, researchers from the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge, working with collaborators from China and Saudi Arabia, have developed an approach for printed electronics that could be used to make low-cost devices that recharge out of thin air. Even the ambient radio signals that surround us would be enough to power them. Their results are published in the journal ACS Nano.

Since the commercial batteries which power many devices have limited lifetimes and negative environmental impacts, researchers are developing electronics that can operate autonomously with ultra-low levels of energy.

̽��ֱ��technology developed by the researchers delivers high-performance electronic circuits based on thin-film transistors which are ‘ambipolar’ as they use only one semiconducting material to transport both negative and positive electric charges in their channels, in a region of operation called ‘deep subthreshold’ – a phrase that essentially means that the transistors are operated in a region that is conventionally regarded as their ‘off’ state. ̽��ֱ��team coined the phrase ‘deep-subthreshold ambipolar’ to refer to unprecedented ultra-low operating voltages and power consumption levels.

If electronic circuits made of these devices were to be powered by a standard AA battery, the researchers say it would be possible that they could run for millions of years uninterrupted.

̽��ֱ��team, which included researchers from Soochow ̽��ֱ��, the Chinese Academy of Sciences, ShanghaiTech ̽��ֱ��, and King Abdullah ̽��ֱ�� of Science and Technology (KAUST), used printed carbon nanotubes – ultra-thin cylinders of carbon – as an ambipolar semiconductor to achieve the result.

“Thanks to deep-subthreshold ambipolar approach, we created printed electronics that meet the power and voltage requirements of real-world applications, and opened up opportunities for remote sensing and ‘place-and-forget’ devices that can operate without batteries for their entire lifetime,” said co-lead author Luigi Occhipinti from Cambridge’s Department of Engineering. “Crucially, our ultra-low-power printed electronics are simple and cost-effective to manufacture and overcome long-standing hurdles in the field.”

“Our approach to printed electronics could be scaled up to make inexpensive battery-less devices that could harvest energy from the environment, such as sunlight or omnipresent ambient electromagnetic waves, like those created by our mobile phones and wifi stations,” said co-lead author Professor Vincenzo Pecunia from Soochow ̽��ֱ��. Pecunia is a former PhD student and postdoctoral researcher at Cambridge’s Cavendish Laboratory.

̽��ֱ��work paves the way for a new generation of self-powered electronics for biomedical applications, smart homes, infrastructure monitoring, and the exponentially-growing Internet of Things device ecosystem.

̽��ֱ��research was funded in part by the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC).

Reference:
L. Portilla et al. ‘Ambipolar Deep-Subthreshold Printed-Carbon-Nanotube Transistors for Ultralow-Voltage and Ultralow-Power Electronics.’ ACS Nano (2020). DOI: 10.1021/acsnano.0c06619

Researchers have developed a new approach to printed electronics that allows ultra-low-power electronic devices which could recharge from ambient light or radiofrequency noise. ̽��ֱ��approach paves the way for low-cost printed electronics that could be seamlessly embedded in everyday objects and environments.

Luis Portilla

Artist's impression of a hybrid-nanodielectric-based printed-CNT transistor

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Yes

Graphene may exceed bandwidth demands of future telecommunications

Anonymous — Fri, 12 Oct 2018 12:34:23 +0000

̽��ֱ��researchers have demonstrated how properties of graphene – a two-dimensional form of carbon - enable ultra-wide bandwidth communications and low power consumption to radically change the way data is transmitted across the optical communications systems.

This could make graphene-integrated devices the key ingredient in the evolution of 5G, the Internet-of-Things (IoT), and Industry 4.0. ̽��ֱ��findings are published in Nature Reviews Materials.

As conventional semiconductor technologies approach their physical limitations, researchers need to explore new technologies to realise the most ambitious visions of a future networked global society. Graphene promises a significant step forward in performance for the key components of telecommunications and data communications.

In their new paper, the researchers have presented a vision for the future of graphene-based integrated photonics, and provided strategies for improving power consumption, manufacturability and wafer-scale integration. With this new publication, the Graphene Flagship partners also provide a roadmap for graphene-based photonics devices surpassing the technological requirement for the evolution of datacom and telecom markets driven by 5G, IoT, and the Industry 4.0.

“Graphene integrated in a photonic circuit is a low cost, scalable technology that can operate fibre links at a very high data rates,” said study lead author Marco Romagnoli from CNIT, the National Interuniversity Consortium for Telecommunications in Italy.

Graphene photonics offers advantages both in performance and manufacturing over the state of the art. Graphene can ensure modulation, detection and switching performances meeting all the requirements for the next evolution in photonic device manufacturing.

Co-author Antonio D’Errico, from Ericsson Research, says that “graphene for photonics has the potential to change the perspective of Information and Communications Technology in a disruptive way. Our publication explains why, and how to enable new feature rich optical networks.”

This industrial and academic partnership, comprising researchers in the Cambridge Graphene Centre, CNIT, Ericsson, Nokia, IMEC, AMO, and ICFO produced the vision for the future of graphene photonic integration.

“Collaboration between industry and academia is key for explorative work towards entirely new component technology,” said co-author Wolfgang Templ of Nokia Bell Labs. “Research in this phase bears significant risks, so it is important that academic research and industry research labs join the brightest minds to solve the fundamental problems. Industry can give perspective on the relevant research questions for potential in future systems. Thanks to a mutual exchange of information we can then mature the technology and consider all the requirements for a future industrialization and mass production of graphene-based components.”

“An integrated approach of graphene and silicon-based photonics can meet and surpass the foreseeable requirements of the ever-increasing data rates in future telecom systems,” said Professor Andrea Ferrari, Director of the Cambridge Graphene Centre. “ ̽��ֱ��advent of the Internet of Things, Industry 4.0 and the 5G era represent unique opportunities for graphene to demonstrate its ultimate potential.”

Reference:
Marco Romagnoli et al. ‘Graphene-based integrated photonics for next-generation datacom and telecom.’ Nature Reviews Materials (2018). DOI: 10.1038/s41578-018-0040-9.

Researchers from the Cambridge Graphene Centre, together with industrial and academic collaborators within the European Graphene Flagship project, showed that integrated graphene-based photonic devices offer a solution for the next generation of optical communications.

Lauren V. Robinson / © Springer Nature Ltd

Yes

£5.4 million centre will help transform the UK’s construction sector for the digital age

sc604 — Thu, 30 Nov 2017 13:19:13 +0000

̽��ֱ��Centre is a partnership between the Department of Business, Energy & Industrial Strategy and the ̽��ֱ�� to support the transformation of the construction sector using digital technologies to better plan, build, maintain and use infrastructure. It will focus on the ongoing transformation of the built environment through the digital tools, standards and processes that are collectively known as Building Information Modelling (BIM). BIM enables the people building and managing our transport networks, cities and major infrastructure projects to take advantage of advances in the digital world to intelligently deliver better services and end products for UK citizens.

Led by Professor Andy Neely, Pro-Vice-Chancellor: Enterprise and Business Relations, the Centre builds on the expertise and experience of faculty from the Cambridge Centre for Smart Infrastructure and Construction (CSIC), Cambridge Big Data, the Distributed Information and Automation Lab (DIAL), the Cambridge Service Alliance (CSA) and the Institute for Manufacturing. ̽��ֱ��Cambridge researchers work with a team of specialists from Digital Built Britain Programme and partners from industry and academia to develop and demonstrate policy and practical insights that will enable the exploitation of new and emerging technologies, data and analytics to enhance the natural and built environment, thereby driving up commercial competitiveness and productivity, as well as citizen quality of life and well-being.

" ̽��ֱ��Centre for Digital Built Britain will work in partnership with Government and industry to improve the performance, productivity and safety of construction through the better use of digital technologies," said Professor Neely.

“ ̽��ֱ��achievement of the BIM Task Group in delivering the Level 2 BIM programme has provided both the UK and increasingly a worldwide platform for the digitisation of the construction and services sectors. We welcome the vast experience and capability Cambridge brings to the team and the creation of the Centre for Digital Built Britain,” said Dr Mark Bew MBE, Strategic Advisor to the Centre for Digital Built Britain.

“ ̽��ֱ��construction and infrastructure sector are poised for a digital revolution, and Britain is well placed to lead it. Over the next decade advances in BIM will combine with the Internet of Things (IoT), data analytics, data-driven manufacturing and the digital economy to enable us to plan new buildings and infrastructure more effectively, build them at lower cost, operate and maintain them more efficiently, and deliver better outcomes to the people who use them,” said Dr Jennifer Schooling, Director of the Centre for Smart Infrastructure and Construction. “This is a wonderful opportunity to put the breadth of research and industry engagement expertise from Cambridge at the heart of Digital Built Britain.”

̽��ֱ��UK is leading the world with its support of BIM implementation in the construction sector through its commitment to the Digital Built Britain Programme. By embedding Level 2 BIM in the government projects such as Crossrail, the programme has contributed significantly to Government’s £3 billion of efficiency savings between 2011 and 2015. Since 2016, all UK centrally funded projects require Level 2 BIM, which has achieved considerable cost savings for its construction procurement to date. Tasked with supporting innovation in the construction sector, the Construction Leadership Council has also put BIM at the heart of its sector strategy Construction 2025; which commits to cut built asset costs by 33 percent, and time and carbon by 50 percent. ̽��ֱ��Centre will continue and build on this transformative approach.

̽��ֱ��Centre for Digital Built Britain will be based in the Maxwell Centre in West Cambridge and will be formally launched in Spring 2018.

̽��ֱ��Government have announced £5.4 million in funding to launch the Centre for Digital Built Britain at the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge, which will help people make better use of cities by championing the digital revolution in the built environment. ̽��ֱ��Centre is part of a landmark government-led investment in growing the UK’s construction sector.

This is a wonderful opportunity to put the breadth of research and industry engagement expertise from Cambridge at the heart of Digital Built Britain.

Jennifer Schooling

raph.ae/

London Skyline

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Yes

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Engineers design ultralow power transistors that could function for years without a battery

sc604 — Thu, 20 Oct 2016 18:00:00 +0000

A newly-developed form of transistor opens up a range of new electronic applications including wearable or implantable devices by drastically reducing the amount of power used. Devices based on this type of ultralow power transistor, developed by engineers at the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge, could function for months or even years without a battery by ‘scavenging’ energy from their environment.

Using a similar principle to a computer in sleep mode, the new transistor harnesses a tiny ‘leakage’ of electrical current, known as a near-off-state current, for its operations. This leak, like water dripping from a faulty tap, is a characteristic of all transistors, but this is the first time that it has been effectively captured and used functionally. ̽��ֱ��results, reported in the journal Science, open up new avenues for system design for the Internet of Things, in which most of the things we interact with every day are connected to the Internet.

̽��ֱ��transistors can be produced at low temperatures and can be printed on almost any material, from glass and plastic to polyester and paper. They are based on a unique geometry which uses a ‘non-desirable’ characteristic, namely the point of contact between the metal and semiconducting components of a transistor, a so-called ‘Schottky barrier.’

“We’re challenging conventional perception of how a transistor should be,” said Professor Arokia Nathan of Cambridge’s Department of Engineering, the paper’s co-author. “We’ve found that these Schottky barriers, which most engineers try to avoid, actually have the ideal characteristics for the type of ultralow power applications we’re looking at, such as wearable or implantable electronics for health monitoring.”

̽��ֱ��new design gets around one of the main issues preventing the development of ultralow power transistors, namely the ability to produce them at very small sizes. As transistors get smaller, their two electrodes start to influence the behaviour of one another, and the voltages spread, meaning that below a certain size, transistors fail to function as desired. By changing the design of the transistors, the Cambridge researchers were able to use the Schottky barriers to keep the electrodes independent from one another, so that the transistors can be scaled down to very small geometries.

̽��ֱ��design also achieves a very high level of gain, or signal amplification. ̽��ֱ��transistor’s operating voltage is less than a volt, with power consumption below a billionth of a watt. This ultralow power consumption makes them most suitable for applications where function is more important than speed, which is the essence of the Internet of Things.

“If we were to draw energy from a typical AA battery based on this design, it would last for a billion years,” said Dr Sungsik Lee, the paper’s first author, also from the Department of Engineering. “Using the Schottky barrier allows us to keep the electrodes from interfering with each other in order to amplify the amplitude of the signal even at the state where the transistor is almost switched off.”

“This will bring about a new design model for ultralow power sensor interfaces and analogue signal processing in wearable and implantable devices, all of which are critical for the Internet of Things,” said Nathan.

“This is an ingenious transistor concept,” said Professor Gehan Amaratunga, Head of the Electronics, Power and Energy Conversion Group at Cambridge’s Engineering Department. “This type of ultra-low power operation is a pre-requisite for many of the new ubiquitous electronics applications, where what matters is function – in essence ‘intelligence’ – without the demand for speed. In such applications the possibility of having totally autonomous electronics now becomes a possibility. ̽��ֱ��system can rely on harvesting background energy from the environment for very long term operation, which is akin to organisms such as bacteria in biology.”

Reference:
S. Lee and A. Nathan, ‘Subthreshold Schottky-barrier thin film transistors with ultralow power and high intrinsic gain’. Science (2016). DOI: 10.1126/science.aah5035

A new design for transistors which operate on ‘scavenged’ energy from their environment could form the basis for devices which function for months or years without a battery, and could be used for wearable or implantable electronics.

If we were to draw energy from a typical AA battery based on this design, it would last for a billion years.

Sungsik Lee

Recklessstudios/Public Domain

Transistors

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Yes

I always feel like somebody’s watching me…

sc604 — Thu, 25 Jun 2015 08:00:34 +0000

It’s a fact of modern life – with every click, every tweet, every Facebook Like, we hand over information about ourselves to organisations who are desperate to know all of our secrets, in the hope that those secrets can be used to sell us something.

Companies have been collecting every possible scrap of information from their customers since long before the internet age, but with more powerful computers, cheaper storage and ubiquitous online use, the methods organisations use to gather information about people have become ever-more sophisticated. And sometimes those organisations know us better than our own families or friends.

For example, several years ago, data analysis tools used by the US retailer Target had become so precise that they were able to determine, with astonishing accuracy, whether a woman was pregnant and how far along she was, based on her purchase of certain products. And in one particularly embarrassing incident, Target knew that a teenage girl was pregnant before her father did, much to her father’s displeasure.

“What Target learned from that incident is that marketing too accurately can really make people squeamish,” says Professor Jon Crowcroft of the ̽��ֱ��’s Computer Laboratory. “But if they made their marketing a little less accurate by increasing the amount of privacy they give their customers, they found they can still retain or increase their customer base without making people feel as if they’re being spied on.”

Crowcroft’s research is in the area of ‘privacy by design’ – systems that allow us to live in the digital world and protect our privacy at the same time. As the concept of the Internet of Things – internet-connected washing machines, toasters and televisions – becomes reality, Crowcroft insists that privacy by design is needed to address the massive power imbalance that occurs when our personal data is shared with, and sold by, corporations, governments and other organisations.

But privacy by design doesn’t mean disconnecting from the online world and putting on a tinfoil hat – far from it. “There’s already a lot of data stored about each and every one of us – the things we buy, the food we eat, the health issues we have – and for each of these market segments, there are perfectly legitimate uses for that data,” adds Crowcroft. “Collecting healthcare data is fantastically useful for tracking pandemics, preventative care, more- efficient treatment, public health – those are all perfectly reasonable and positive uses for big data. At the same time, most sites gather information in order to target ads more accurately, and most people are actually okay with that. So the question then becomes, what is privacy by design?”

“What we’re trying to do is develop processing frameworks that would allow this data to be useful and to be used, without the somewhat creepy feeling that you’re constantly being watched,” says Crowcroft’s colleague Dr Richard Mortier.

̽��ֱ��type of system that Crowcroft and Mortier envision is one in which the user has the scope to allow access to their data on a case-by-case basis, rather than it be harvested whether they like it or not: computations are performed where the data is gathered, and the results are pushed back to the organisation that wants the data.

“We can change the big data problem completely by moving where the data is processed,” explains Mortier. “Rather than having systems where all of the data is gathered in some huge central location and processed, if you reconstruct the system so that the data is processed in the same place it’s gathered, individuals would be able to take some of the control of their information back from corporations and surveillance organisations. Instead of one huge central processing node, we want to see billions of smaller nodes, which would make information quicker to access, and could potentially be stored
at lower overall cost.”

Crowcroft and Mortier have designed and partially built systems where a person’s data stays local to them, and they can have the option to decide what is shared and with whom. For example, a patient can share their healthcare data with their GP, but the GP would have to get authorisation from the patient before sharing that data with a pharmaceutical company.

“People realise they’re being marketed to, but I don’t think they realise the scale of it – it really is a hidden menace,” says Crowcroft. “ ̽��ֱ��point is that we could build systems that could stop that completely, and re-enable it on the basis of a level playing field. We want to see systems where people have agency over their data, giving them the ability to allow or prevent certain types of access.”

Contrary to what some people may assume about the nature of digital life, adds Crowcroft, the vast majority of people highly value their own privacy. He points to the launch and then recall of Google Glass, a wearable computer worn like eyeglasses. “People started wearing these things into restaurants and other diners wouldn’t put up with it, because they didn’t want to be recorded while eating their lunch – it really creeped people out,” he says.

“And that’s in a public space: imagine the same sort of thing happening in a private space. It’s about the asymmetry and the idea that this is being done to you and you have no comeback. ̽��ֱ��problem with digital infrastructures is you don’t see them, and to a certain extent companies depend on people not understanding them – we can build systems where there are mechanisms through which they can be understood.”

Crowcroft and Mortier recognise that they’ll never convince everyone to ditch cloud computing and switch to a decentralised system. But that isn’t their goal. “It takes a while to show that new ways of doing things can really work,” says Crowcroft. “If these sorts of systems become a reasonably widely used alternative, it will go a long way towards keeping companies and cloud storage providers honest. ̽��ֱ��very small number of providers leads to the exploitation of the network effect, where they have a strong monopolistic position over a certain type of data. And monopolies are not good for economies. If a decentralised system is more ethical, enough people using it may incentivise the big providers to be more ethical too.”

Inset image: Professor Jon Crowcroft and Dr Richard Mortier ( ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge).

What power can individuals have over their data when their every move online is being tracked? Researchers at the Cambridge Computer Laboratory are building new systems that shift the power back to individual users, and could make personal data faster to access and at much lower cost.

We're trying to develop processing frameworks that would allow this data to be useful and to be used, without the somewhat creepy feeling that you’re constantly being watched

Richard Mortier

̽��ֱ��District

Eye

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Yes