14 DAY TRIAL // According to various estimates, smartphones must be held responsible for consuming relatively large amounts of energy, most of which goes into generating radio signals by means of electricity.
More precisely, reports show that, for the time being, roughly 1% of the electrical energy generated on a global scale is used up by smartphones.
Since energy efficiency is listed as one of the major goals of sustainable development, it should come as no surprise that efforts are now being made to cut down on these gizmos’ energy requirements.
A team of two MIT engineering professors now claim that, thanks to a new technology they have developed, smartphones could soon cut their electricity consumption in half.
As they explain, most of the electricity burnt by smartphones goes into keeping power amplifiers (i.e. the gadget that turns electricity into radio signals) up and running.
This translates into electricity-thirsty cellular base stations and smartphones whose batteries die out after relatively short periods.
By improving on these amplifiers, specialists Joel Dawson and David Perreault hope to cut the overall energy requirements of smartphones worldwide by 50%.
The main idea is that, by keeping energy consumption down at a minimum when power amplifiers find themselves in their standby mode and at the same time making sure the signals do not get distorted when the amplifier switches to its output mode, it is possible to up the smartphones' energy efficiency.
“With high data rate communication, you wind up needing far more standby power than signal power. This is why the phone is warm,” Joel Dawson explains.
MIT Technology Review explains that, with the help of this new technology, known as asymmetric multilevel outphasing, one can minimize power consumption to a considerable extent, simply because these new power amplifiers will see to it that the most energy-efficient voltages get selected and sent through the transistor.
This “picking and choosing” will occur at a rate of 20 million times per second.
According to the same source, this new technology will be launched at the next Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, and will first and foremost target developing countries which burn noteworthy amounts of diesel fuels to power base stations.