Ultra-cyberphysical system for truly wireless charging

Nowadays, wired charging and the need for battery replacements are still critical barriers for unlimited, scalable, and sustainable connectivity and mobility over time in our increasingly digitized, data-driven, and autonomous societies. UPRISING is committed to radio frequency (RF)-wireless power transfer (WPT) for breaking this barrier because of its potential for realizing long-range multi-user mobile charging. Still, the main challenges of RF-WPT technology are the low end-to-end power transfer efficiency (PTE) and the lack of technology standardization. There is an urgent need of developing PTE-boosting, cost-efficient, and risk-aware guarantees on people’s exposure to electromagnetic field (EMF) radiation, to make RF-WPT attractive and competitive. UPRISING introduces and optimizes a cyberphysical system consisting of spatially distributed and flexible energy transmitters, reconfigurable metasurfaces, sensing infrastructure, WPT management system, and holistic charging protocols, addressing these challenges, thus, leading to a functional and competitive indoor RF-WPT system. Potential innovations may specifically come from novel charging hardware topology configurations, EMF radiation exposure characterization frameworks, risk-aware dynamic EMF control, and intelligent and holistic WPT and wireless information management. 

PI: Onel Alcaraz López (onel.alcarazlopez@oulu.fi)

• 01-2024: MSc. Amir Azarbahram is visiting Prof. Popovski's group at Aalborg University for 3 months to research wireless charging protocols.

• 12-2023: We design WPT energy beamformers suited to dynamic metasurface antennas in our IEEE Wireless Communications Letters paper, and radio stripes deployment strategies for indoor WPT in our WCNC 2024 conference paper.

• 10-2023: Relevant results on EMF assessment and the impact of high frequencies and near field channels were compiled in a magazine paper and submitted to IEEE Wireless Communications.

• 07-2023: We presented RF as a fundamental enabler for energy-sustainable IoT connectivity in our IEEE Open Journal of the Communications Society paper and how to make it self-sustainable in our IEEE Access paper.

• 01-2023: MSc. Amir Azarbahram started as a PhD student funded by UPRISING. Welcome, Amir!

• 12-2022: MSc. Abdul Basit Khattak started as a PhD student funded by UPRISING. Welcome, Abdul!

• 09-2022: Initial measurements and results on WPT for Bluetooth Low Energy were presented at the 14th International Congress on Ultra Modern Telecommunications and Control Systems (ICUMT), Valencia, October 11-13, 2022.

• 07/08-2022: Applications for the open positions are received and processed. Interviews with the most prospective applicants are carried out. Recruitment is finalized with two hired PhD students.

• 06-2022: UPRISING is funded by the Academy of Finland. Two research positions are open and a recruitment campaign starts.