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Re:New Zealand is about to test long-range wireless power tr... by Emrod on Wednesday September 09, 2020 @08:05PM (#24427462)
efficiency is not a function of distance when there is no lose in the atmosphere :)

At the moment we are working with about 60% end to end efficiency

Re:New Zealand is about to test long-range wireless power tr... by superkuh on Wednesday September 09, 2020 @08:31PM (#24427625)
If path loss doesn't matter to you then you've revolutionized both communications and war.

There's spread over distance. If you've found a way to prevent spread it's either not free space or a change to the electromagnetics fundamentals. It's a really bold claim to make. But maybe I'm misunderstanding something.

Re:New Zealand is about to test long-range wireless power tr... by ladberg on Thursday September 10, 2020 @04:42AM (#24430193)
Eliminating path loss has always been relatively easy if both ends never move. I’m assuming they mean negligible spread over the distance tested instead of no spread.
Re:New Zealand is about to test long-range wireless power tr... by ac29 on Thursday September 10, 2020 @05:20PM (#24436692)
I work with radio, and I'm not sure how exactly you are "eliminating" path loss on any sort of real world link, even ones fixed in position. Even very high gain antennas and very small wavelengths are going to spread the energy out to some degree over any non-trivial distance (most links I work on are 10km+, so maybe your definition of non-trivial distances are different than mine).
Re:New Zealand is about to test long-range wireless power tr... by TheSpiceIsLife on Thursday September 10, 2020 @03:03AM (#24429684)
> there is no lose in the atmosphere

I know bullshit when someone spells it out for me.

Re:New Zealand is about to test long-range wireless power tr... by samus on Thursday September 10, 2020 @05:39AM (#24430545)
Maybe they found a frequency that is not absorbed by the athmosphere that much. Seems far-fetched with the gas mix that the athmosphere is, but I guess that such frequencies would be company IP.
Re:New Zealand is about to test long-range wireless power tr... by jjoonathan on Thursday September 10, 2020 @02:50PM (#24435352)
Instruments that sweep all frequencies have been available since shortly after the dawn of radio and public atmospheric absorption tables have been available for nearly as long. Also, absorption bands tend to be very broad in this region, so after 10 or 20 data points there's nowhere for a magic frequency to hide.
Re:New Zealand is about to test long-range wireless power tr... by Emrod on Thursday September 10, 2020 @05:32PM (#24436770)
You are correct. There's no magic at work here. We don't break the laws of physics, we just flex them with clever engineering... like most innovators that came before us.
Re:New Zealand is about to test long-range wireless power tr... by superkuh on Thursday September 10, 2020 @12:33PM (#24433874)
Path loss through free space at these relatively low frequencies (<6 GHz) isn't from air/water vapor losses. It's from diffraction spread.

This company can say all they want about near field tech, but the beam waist diameter relative to wavelength determines the diffraction spread. And that aspect of path loss is proportional to the distance in wavelengths even if there's no "absorption" by the air components. For any reasonable link at 2.4-5.8 GHz the length in wavelengths will be tens of thousands.

Re:New Zealand is about to test long-range wireless power tr... by Emrod on Thursday September 10, 2020 @05:14PM (#24436632)
The equations governing diffraction are relatively straight forward. We are operating within the near-field (or more accurately in the Frensel range). I'm sure you can do the math and see how focusing a phased array can reduce diffraction at this range :)
Re:New Zealand is about to test long-range wireless power tr... by superkuh on Thursday September 10, 2020 @09:35PM (#24438324)
Just make sure to do your liability math because in a about a year you're going to have a lot of investors very angry at you.