PASSIVE WI-FI: Bringing Low Power to Wi-Fi Transmissions

Wi-Fi has traditionally been considered a power-consuming communication system and has not been widely adopted in the sensor network and Internet of Things (IoT) space. We introduce Passive Wi-Fi that demonstrates that one can generate 802.11b transmissions using backscatter communication, while consuming 3 -4 orders of magnitude lower power than existing Wi-Fi chipsets. Passive Wi-Fi transmissions can be decoded on any Wi-Fi device including routers, mobile phones and tablets. Our experimental evaluation shows that passive Wi-Fi transmissions can be decoded on off-the-shelf smartphones and Wi-Fi chipsets over distances of up to 100 feet. We also design a passive Wi-Fi IC that shows that 1 and 11 Mbps transmissions consume 14.5 and 59.2 mu W respectively. This translates to 10000x lower power than existing Wi-Fi chipsets and 1000x lower power than Bluetooth LE and ZigBee.