IoBaLeT: Sustainable Internet of Battery-Less Things (IOBALET)

The Internet of Things (IoT) vision has enabled the wireless connection of billions of batterypowered devices to the Internet. However, batteries are expensive, bulky, cause pollution and degrade after a few years. Replacing and disposing of billions of dead batteries every year is costly and unsustainable. We posit the vision of a sustainable Internet of Battery-Less Things (IoBaLeT). We imagine battery-less devices storing small amounts of energy in capacitors, harvested from their environment or obtained through simultaneous wireless information and power transfer (SWIPT). Using this energy, these intermittently-powered devices are able to cooperatively perform sensing, actuation and communication tasks. Existing battery-less technology has many shortcomings. Such devices, usually based on passive RFID and backscatter, only support simple sensing, unable to handle more complex application logic. Networks do not scale, have a shortrange and a very low throughput. The goal of IoBaLeT is to bring battery-less technology to the next level. We envision battery-less devices and networks that support complex sensing and actuation applications, and offer throughput, scalability and range on-par with their batterypowered counterparts. To achieve this, we propose a novel battery-less IoT device design that relies on a combination of SWIPT, hybrid energy harvesting, active transmissions and wake-up radios. The project will innovate in terms of SWIPT efficiency, battery-less networking protocols, and distributed intermittent computing paradigms and scheduling algorithms. Leaving batteries behind will enable IoT applications at an unprecedented scale, with a significantly extended lifetime and in hard-to-reach places.