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PCB007-Apr2021

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22 PCB007 MAGAZINE I APRIL 2021 would like to join IPC's ESG for Electronics steering group. For more information, send an e-mail to ESG@ipc.org or visit www.ipc.org/ esg-electronics. As this area of corporate responsibility be- comes more prevalent and relevant, we at IPC will work with you to ensure that we have an industry-specific approach to ESG guidelines and reporting. PCB007 Dr. John Mitchell is president and CEO of IPC. To read past columns or contact him, click here. standards, workforce, research, and advocacy to achieve industry-backed ESG goals related to environmental stewardship and workforce opportunities. I look forward to a conversation about this latest issue facing our industry. Please reach out and let me know if your company under- takes ESG reporting, if you're concerned about the effect of ESG on your business, if you be- lieve industry collectively should do more to support ESG goals, if you seek greater indus- try opportunities to support ESG, or if you Researchers at the Georgia Institute of Technolo- gy have uncovered an innovative way to tap into the over-capacity of 5G networks, turning them into "a wireless power grid" for powering Internet of Things (IoT) devices that today need batteries to operate. The Georgia Tech inventors have developed a flexible Rotman lens-based rectifying antenna (rec- tenna) system capable, for the first time, of millime- ter-wave harvesting in the 28-GHz band. (The Rot- man lens is key for beamforming networks and is frequently used in radar surveillance systems to see targets in multiple directions without physically moving the antenna system.) But to harvest enough power to supply low-pow- er devices at long ranges, large aperture antennas are required. The problem with large antennas is they have a narrowing field of view. This limitation prevents their operation if the antenna is widely dis- persed from a 5G base station. "We've solved the problem of only being able to look from one direction with a system that has a wide angle of coverage," said senior researcher Aline Eid in the ATHENA lab, established in Georgia Tech's School of Electrical and Computer En- gineering to advance and de- velop novel technologies for electromagnetic, wireless, RF, millimeter-wave, and sub-terahertz applications. The findings were reported in the Jan.12 issue of the journal Scientific Reports. The FCC has authorized 5G to focalize pow- er much more densely compared with previous generations of cellular networks. While today's 5G was built for high-bandwidth communication, the high-frequency network holds rich opportunity to "harvest" unused power that would otherwise be wasted. "With this innovation, we can have a large anten- na, which works at higher frequencies and can re- ceive power from any direction. It's direction-ag- nostic, which makes it a lot more practical," noted Jimmy Hester, senior lab advisor and the CTO and co-founder of Atheraxon, a Georgia Tech spinoff de- veloping 5G radio-frequency identification (RFID) technology. With the Georgia Tech solution, all the electro- magnetic energy collected by the antenna arrays from one direction is combined and fed into a single rectifier, which maximizes its efficiency. (Source: George Tech) (Photo credit: Christopher Moore, Georgia Tech) Leveraging the 5G Network to Wirelessly Power IoT Devices

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