Windows are quickly becoming portals to the future.
Scientists in Switzerland are already paving the way for electricity-generating windows that can help power our homes and devices. But now researchers in Saudi Arabia have developed technology capable of transmitting a wireless Internet signal powered by the sun through specialized glass.
“I hope that [in future] smart modern office buildings with giant glass windows will work with the Internet based on this technology,” Professor Osama Amin, lead researcher on the project at King Abdullah University of Science and Technology, told Euronews Next.
The team of scientists says that if they can achieve a high data rate, they can do “anything”.
Its technology leveraging windows to transfer data over the Internet is still in its infancy, with a broadband speed of around 15-16 Kbps.
“The intention is to radically improve this number, but for now it can already be used for IoT applications because the sensors need a low data rate”, he said.
“We’re moving towards the smart home. And any type of sensor should benefit from that.”
Sunlight turned to binary ones and zeros
So how does it work? Imagine glass windows as a modem, says Amin.
The Saudi innovation uses the polarization of sunlight to transfer data using smart glass elements known as dual-cell liquid crystal shutters (DLS).
Electromagnetic polarization is one of the properties of electromagnetic waves, like light.
Polarized sunglasses, for example, use electromagnetic polarization to filter light. They block reflected light and let only useful light through, reducing eyestrain and glare to facilitate safe, eye-friendly viewing.
“The light that comes in unpolarized has a lot of direction, but polarization organizes the direction, allowing some light to pass through and not some,” explained Amin.
But how does this relate to the Internet?
Polarization allows sunlight to be organized into “a kind of one-and-zero language, which is predetermined by the original data coming from a LAN cable connected to the edge of the smart glass,” he added.
“A LAN cable goes to the router, there we can have this WiFi signal. In our system, the LAN cable will be connected to the edge of the glass, the glass will be a transmitter for the ground cable, and instead of using electricity to propagate the signal, it will only use sunlight”.
The variation in light, imperceptible to the human eye, communicates Internet data wirelessly to devices in the room.
“Basically, what we’ve done is a small device with multiple layers. And those layers can change the polarity of light by modeling the transparency of the glass. And when you change the opacity very quickly, data flow occurs,” said Sahar Ammar, PhD. Student who participated in the research.
Are our devices ready to take the Internet from glass?
Typically, wireless communication technologies are based on radio frequency communication or optical communication, which require active light sources with high energy cost, such as lasers and light emitting diodes (LEDs).
The Saudi system works like any visible light communication (VLC) system, which modulates the light from LEDs to carry information.
However, the team’s approach is innovative in that it also modulates the intensity of natural sunlight while encoding Internet data through the opacity of the glass, which can be detected and decoded by devices in the room.
Devices that could benefit from sun-powered data transfer technology need to be specially designed to detect polarized information.
However, smartphone camera developers are already working to make devices capable of deciphering data sent this way.
“Using sustainable sunlight for data transmission as a green option for wireless communications, that’s the goal,” he added.
The research was published in the journal IEEE Photonic in October.
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