Like the biosphere the technosphere is all around us. It contains TV, mobile phone, GPS, Wi-Fi and radio waves. Radio waves are omnipresent, can move through objects and yield a low amount of power. A research team from Georgia Tech School of Electrical and Computer Engineering made significant developments in harvesting this free energy from the technosphere.
Using an ultra-wideband antenna they are able to harvest energy from a broad frequency range, stretching from FM radio to radar (100MHz to 15GHz). With the use of a standard ink-jet printer, equipped with nanoparticle ink, the ultra-wideband antenna can be produced at a very low cost.
These antennas could provide a small but constant flow of electricity which could be used to power RFID tags, environmental monitors, medical sensors, calculators, clocks and other low power devices. Many of these devices are currently powered by batteries that eventually fade away or cannot survive temperature changes.