New cell phone antenna tech to drastically reduce power use

A new wireless antenna technology developed by Atif Shamim, an engineering student at Canada's Carleton University, is claimed to be able to reduce a mobile phone's antenna power consumption by nearly 92%. The key piece of the technology involves disconnecting a cell phone's antenna from the rest of the electronic components in the device.

In order to separate the antenna from the rest of the phone, Shamim's system uses very short range wireless transmitting micro-antennas within the chip design to handle the communications. Shamim says that by insulating the antenna from the rest of the devices that it would normally be wired to, there is no chance for the antenna's transmission power to be drained, thus lowering the overall burden a cell phone places on its battery.

Shamim has already filed for patents to protect his invention.