Charging Unplugged: Will Distributed Laser Charging for Mobile Wireless Power Transfer Work?

Increasing the battery-recharge period of smartphones is becoming a challenge since their power consumption is increased as a result of enhanced functions that require sophisticated multimedia signal processing. An attractive solution is constituted by wireless charging, which is capable of replenishing the battery over the ether. Given this motivation, we present the fundamental physics and the related system structure of a promising wireless charging technique, i.e., distributed laser charging (DLC). Relying on DLC's unique features, we may be capable of transmitting approximately 2 W of power up to a distance of about 10 m. Following the comparison of the other three major wireless charging techniques, i.e., inductive coupling, magnetic resonance coupling, and microwave radiation, we demonstrate the benefits of DLC in the context of mobile applications. We then propose a pair of wireless charging network architectures, i.e., a DLC-aided, infrastructure-based network and a DLC-based ad-hoc network. These network architectures illustrate the potential of DLC in realizing the fully charged utopia for any device, anywhere, and anytime.