Forget Charging Pads and USB Cables – Your Phone Will Soon Power Itself

Imagine a future where there are no cables and no wireless charging pads. Instead, your devices charge continuously throughout the day, without a thought. Well, the future is here, and it works through the use of radio frequencies as electrical power.

In fact, this kind of future stems from an old technology concept that Nikola Tesla demonstrated back in the 1800s – but until now, it’s never been an efficient enough method to be useful to anyone. Finally, thanks to companies like Warp Solution, that’s changing.

Radio frequency charging requires technology at both energy transmission and reception ends. Radio frequencies need to be transmitted though the air – no different from cellular towers emitting 5G radio frequencies – and those frequencies must then be received and converted into DC power to charge batteries or power devices. The end result is you walking around with your phone being powered continuously, and with no more battery anxiety.

But we don’t have that in the present, even though the technology exists. What gives? The problem is efficiency and power – wireless connectivity is usually a low-power tech, which means there’s far too little power to charge any device wirelessly. The energy generated wouldn’t even meet the threshold to power most consumer devices, like smartphones, and even for smaller devices charging rates would be so low as to make over-the-air charging useless. Also, a lot of what little power is transmitted is lost in the process, with over-the-air charging currently a very inefficient process.

Warp Solution solves the power problem by putting a power amplifier on its transmitters, making its radio frequencies powerful enough to charge other devices, and by also making and using receivers with RF-to-DC converters.

Their RF-to-DC converters are currently only 60% efficient, meaning that a lot of the power supplied from radio frequencies is still lost in the conversion process; they will solve for this by supplying enough power on the transmission end.

Currently, Warp Solution’s over-the-air charging can only supply up to 3W of power – not yet enough to fully charge a phone. But that power can be used to charge one device, or to spread that power out to multiple devices in the area.

As the number of devices and transmission distance increase, the charging power goes down – that’s why, for now, we only see this kind of technology used in factories or stores, to power arrays of small sensors or eInk displays used as labels.

So, when Warp Solution says they think providing 1kW charging over the air should be possible by 2028, there must be a pretty big change coming soon! That change is 6G implementation, which we could see happening worldwide in a few years. 6G frequencies will be even higher than those of 5G, allowing more power to be transmitted, as well.

What this all means is that in the near future we’ll be able to have continuously charging phones without us even thinking about it.

The upshot isn’t just an end to battery range anxiety – if your phone is charging continuously, that also means that it doesn’t need as big a battery as it currently does. The same goes for other gadgets and devices. Batteries can get much, much smaller if devices are continuously being charged – it’s like leaving your devices plugged in at all times, without the cord. That means lighter devices, but it also means less battery waste, making the tech a little more environmentally friendly – even considering the amount of power that will need to be generated on the transmission side.

There are still a lot of barriers to making this happen, however. Warp Solution needs to implement their tech in both transmitter devices and receiver devices to work. That means navigating relationships with a lot of different companies, and a lot of different municipalities and local governments.

For example, once 6G is implemented, 5G infrastructure will be largely unused, leaving it open to be used by companies like Warp Solution for power transmission. That could power smart city grids of sensors and cameras, but there will be a lot of privacy and cost questions to answer first.

That’s still in the 6G future. For now, Warp Solution will continue to make waves behind the scenes in smart factories and warehouses – but the day is coming soon when the 19th century promise of over-the-air charging will be realized for the rest of us.

This story has been brought to you in partnership with Aving.NET and Pangyo Techno Valley. Pangyo Techno Valley, a global innovation hub in South Korea, hosted the ‘Pangyo Global Media Meet Up’ to share issues from Pangyo and its innovative companies with the world. The event facilitates networking between Pangyo companies and global innovation hubs like Silicon Valley, Station F, and China’s Zhongguancun. It also promotes Korean businesses through global media channels. All thoughts and opinions are 100% our own.