RF-ultrasound relay for efficient power and data transfer across interfaces
AssigneeThe Board of Trustees of the Leland Stanford Junior University
InventorsMohammad Amin Arbabian, Chun-Ming Ernest So, Jayant Charthad, Ting Chia Chang, Max Li-Hua Wang
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Abstract
A hybrid RF-acoustic relay is provided where some but not all of the incident RF power is rectified to power the relay and, optionally, to provide power for further link features. The remaining fraction of the incident RF power is used to directly drive an acoustic transceiver array in communication with one or more acoustically powered nodes. In this manner, power, control and communication can be efficiently provided to acoustically powered nodes even in situations where an RF link or an acoustic link would perform poorly.
Claims16
Apparatus configured as a hybrid RF-acoustic relay unit, the apparatus comprising:
- one or more RF transceivers configured to receive received RF signals from an external RF unit;
- one or more acoustic transceivers configured to transmit transmitted acoustic signals to one or more acoustically powered nodes, wherein each of the one or more acoustic transceivers includes at least one acoustic transducer;
- a power splitter configured to split incident power provided by the received RF signals into a first part and a second part;
- wherein power for the apparatus is provided by rectifying the first part;
- wherein the second part is used to directly drive the one or more acoustic transceivers such that an acoustic emission frequency of the one or more acoustic transceivers is the same as an RF frequency of the second part.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.