Perspective Paper—Can AC Computing Be an Alternative for Wirelessly Powered IoT Devices?

An alternative computing paradigm is explored in this letter with application to wirelessly powered Internet of Things (IoT) devices. Contrary to existing methods that rely on DC computing, the wirelessly harvested AC power is directly used for computation by leveraging charge-recycling theory. The proposed approach has the potential to significantly reduce the energy cost, one of the primary barriers that slows down the global scalability of IoT devices. This opportunity and related challenges are investigated in this letter to provide guidelines for future research in the field.