Tag Archives: Rezence System

The Rezence Standard for Wireless Charging

Typical wireless charging technologies depend on magnetic induction to transfer power from a ‘mat’ to the specially designed mobile device under charge. However, Rezence holds forth the concept of spatial freedom, which extends the wireless power applications to go beyond the mat to any surface and into almost any mobile device. Unlike magnetic induction, Rezence works on the principles of magnetic resonance. With Rezence, the wireless charging ecosystem has a number of unique benefits.

The Rezence standard allows superior charging range. This amounts to a true drop and go charging experience, with charging taking place through almost any surface and through several objects such as clothing and books. The new standard is able to charge many devices simultaneously even when they have different power requirements – including Bluetooth handsets, laptops, tablets and smartphones.

The Rezence standard is an ideal choice for charging in situations involving kitchen appliances, retail and automotive applications. Rezence powered charging surfaces do not conflict with metallic objects such as coins and keys. Additionally, use of this new technology minimizes the hardware requirements of the manufacturer as it leverages the existing Bluetooth Smart v4.0 technology. Therefore, users can have Smart Charging Zones in the future.

The world already has multiple wireless power standards. Ultimately, the consumer will decide the most popular wireless power technology it will use. Presently, wireless power is undergoing the same process of certification and testing that other technologies such as 4G, 3G, Bluetooth and Wi-Fi have had to go through. Although technology selection and adoption is primarily a market-based mechanism, development of standards is a process separate and distinct from the former.

The Rezence standard is actually the released version 1.0 of the A4WP specifications, released in January 2013. Only when an outside standards organization accepts a specification, it is truly considered a standard. Therefore, organizations, including the A4WP, sometimes use the two terms interchangeably – as a matter of semantics.

Other organizations, including A4WP, are technically at the stage of development of the specifications. Additionally, A4WP is working actively with standard bodies around the world to ensure their technology will be adopted regionally as well.

Various organizations have promoted their wireless power technologies over several years. However, most of the older technologies have proven to be impractical in real-world applications. For example, they work well for single devices when these are positioned perfectly on a charging mat. Moreover, the charging range remains limited and the inability to handle differing power requirements at the same time makes this technology impractical.

When working with wireless power system design, heating and power absorption are dependent upon metal thickness and magnetic field strength. The older wireless inductive charging systems mostly use 115 KHz, at which frequency common household objects such as metal stickers, paper clips and even coins have higher power absorption and consequently, heat up. The Rezence system, with its operating frequency of 6.78 MHZ, does not cause similar heating up of common metal objects.

Therefore, unlike the older charging systems, in the Rezence method of charging, common metal objects do not heat up to create a hazard or trigger the termination of the charging process.