You’ve all heard about wireless charging, but it usually entails a charging pad and the inevitable wires are there to spoil the definition of wireless. It would appear that Apple has been working on REAL wireless charging, which means using radio frequencies to juice up devices and they have a patent for it.
Their invention refers to iPads and iPhones and using radio frequencies like cellular (700 MHz to 2700 MHz) or WiFi (2.4 GHz to 5 GHz) and milimmeter wave (between 10 GHz and 400 GHz) to charge iDevices. The patent sounds amazing and involves a system of “Dual Frequency Patch Antennas”. It actually dates from back in 2015, but it only saw the light of day recently via USPTO.
It entails transmitting power through the 60 GHz wavelength and using the WiGig 802.11ad standard. A “beamforming” technology of sorts is also mentioned, when it comes to locating a device that requires charging and sending direct power in that area. This is already used by routers and access points and we could even see wireless charging offered by routers.
Of course there are many challenges involved by this tech and it would appear it requires a series of antennae integrated around the perimeter, to carry the signal. Things sound really interesting this time around.
