[icoder]

Although I don't recognise myself in the style of the comment you're responding to, I would like to point out a (watch) battery will not die in 10 minutes when drawing microwats only. I think we want to separate low energy usage, which is a cool feat by itself, and RF harvesting (which goes well with low energy usage, but so might a small, cheap, battery).

[edoloughlin]

I'm not an RF engineer, but the video mentioned that the 'traditional' WiFi component would draw 1W. I assumed that, if you add a battery, it's to power this part.

[rasz]

No, backscatter is the only legit part of this writeup, everything else is made up.

"we simulate an ASIC, which achieves 60 fps 720p and 1080p HD video streaming for 321 µW and 806 µW, respectively" simulate, how convenient!

"Our inter and intra-frame compression algorithms reduces total bandwidth requirements by up to two orders of magnitude compared to raw video" so they also invented mpeg4 level of compression 1mW codec.

You might wonder how such an amazing compression codec works? its middle-out. They transmit "fullhd" by transmitting ~100x50 resolution intra frames ":). Everything is Simulated, Estimated, Planned, Theorized, Calculated and Faked. That cool 1080 YT clip of them walking around the corridor just after showing you face mounted camera models? Never happened, prototype is BW 112×112, "simulated" again. Their setup can do 1080@60 of a static picture, there is only enough bandwidth to sustain ~2fps without dropping data. They even conveniently kept all the calculations ignoring color (3x the data).

Reminds me of energy harvesting wristwatch crowdfunding HN was raving about few months back, conveniently ignoring particular design including battery able to power it for couple of years.