Delft researchers develop Bluetooth that doesn’t mind a power outage

Advancing on their dream to rid internet-of-things devices of batteries, researchers at Delft University of Technology have developed “two-way, intermittently-powered Bluetooth.” The technology, dubbed Freebie, continues to work even if the power supply is interrupted, as is bound to happen if the device depends on harvesting its energy from ambient power sources and doesn’t have a backup power supply.

The Delft research group led by Przemyslaw Pawelczak previously developed a system that enables battery-free devices to keep time despite power interruptions. As a demonstrator, the team also created a batteryless 8-bit Nintendo Game Boy clone powered by sunlight and key presses.

“We want IoT devices to be free of batteries, as these are hazardous, bulky and they have a chemical impact on the environment,” says Jasper de Winkel, co-author of the Freebie paper recently presented at the ACM Mobisys conference in Portland. Intermittent computing allows these devices to perform their essential functions on harvested – and thereby often intermittent – energy alone, without ever losing data. “The things part was already solved. Now, with intermittently-powered Bluetooth, we’ve also addressed the internet part.”