Smart Infrastructure Exploiting Backscatter Communications

The K-Briq, a world-first sustainable brick made almost entirely of construction waste, has demonstrated the great potential to transform the construction industry.

This novel brick from Kenoteq (https://kenoteq.com/), a spin-out startup from Heriot-Watt University, has been highly recognised, such as receiving Design and Creativity Award (Converge Challenge) in 2018 and Times Higher Education Award (STEM Research Project of the Year) in 2020.

The proposed research project aims to push the sustainability to a next level, i.e., not only sustainability in terms of brick fabrication, but also sustainability to the every-day operation of the buildings that are constructed with the K-Briq.

This will be enabled by embedding sensors into bricks, and they, after being laid into a building, can establish a wireless network to sense and assist building operation.

That embedding into bricks means that the sensing nodes have to be maintenance-free, i.e., no external power sources like batteries can be relied on.

The research team will further develop high-efficiency RF energy harvesting and backscattering wireless communication technologies to enable power autonomy to the nodes and reliable wireless link establishment.