company news about 5G base stations can be powered wirelessly

Without electricity, even the most powerful base station cannot operate. In order to supply power to the base station, the operator has to coordinate with the power company to introduce external city power to the site and equip the storage battery as a backup power source.

However, the introduction of this project from external city power has a long period and high cost. In the construction of base stations, the introduction or transformation period is often too long, which affects the progress of base station opening.

Today, wireless charging technology has been widely used. It gets rid of the shackles of lengthy charging cables, allowing us to charge mobile phones at hand, which greatly facilitates our daily lives.

Can the base station use wireless power supply like a mobile phone?

Recently, Ericsson announced a collaboration with laser innovation company PowerLight to showcase the world's first 5G base station with wireless power supply.

Ericsson said that the proof-of-concept (PoC) test uses a laser-based technology that converts electricity into a high-intensity beam, which is then captured and converted to electricity on the base station side, which can replace the power line from the base station to the grid and improve base station deployment Speed and flexibility.

How far is the transmission distance?

The demonstration uses Ericsson’s Streetmacro 6701, a 5G millimeter-wave base station device, and uses PowerLight’s laser technology to achieve the transmission of hundreds of watts of energy within a distance of hundreds of meters

Ericsson said that this successful demonstration has taken the first milestone, and the next step is to achieve a longer distance transmission of kilowatts of energy.

How about security?

The article stated that the laser beam has a virtual protective cover. When a creature or object passes through its propagation path, the protective cover will be automatically activated, temporarily shutting down the power transmission, and at the same time quickly switching the base station power supply to the battery.

This technology replaces power supply lines with wireless transmission, which can help operators quickly open base station sites. It is especially suitable for the rapid deployment of urban pole stations and micro-stations, and is also very suitable for emergency communication security scenarios. In addition, it can also supply power for various IoT devices such as unmanned AGVs, drones, and sensors.

Remote charging with laser beams is not a new technology. According to reports, as early as 2018, a research team at the University of Washington developed for the first time a method of using lasers to safely charge smartphones. The team installed a thin battery on the back of the smartphone and demonstrated the use of a laser beam to charge the battery over a long distance.

In addition, similar to the "virtual shield" function demonstrated by PowerLight and Ericsson, the team also designed a safety function for laser beam charging based on the beam reflection mechanism, that is, when someone tries to cross the laser beam emission path, the charging beam will be automatically turned off.

However, this time Ericsson and PowerLight expanded the application range of this technology from home electronics to base station equipment for the first time, and achieved new breakthroughs in transmission distance and energy.