Steve Simon is the Chief Technology Officer of AlwaysReady Inc, a wholly owned subsidiary of mPhase Technologies focusing on nano and MEMS technologies and advanced power sources. He joined mPhase Technologies in 2004. Previously, he served in engineering management and emerging technology development positions within Lucent Technologies, Bell Labs and AT&T Labs. He holds a number of system patents in voice, data and video communications and device and component patents involving advanced power cell architectures.

How are the forces of convergence influencing Web giants, large media players, legacy technology players to reinvent and even reinvigorate the communications business and what does all this confluence mean for the futuristic communication devices, cellphones and mobile handsets?

Steve Simon: Having spent many years in the R&D labs developing forward looking network-based services for voice, data, and imaging applications for the telecommunications industry, I have watched this convergence evolving over many years. Content providers, telecommunications infrastructure providers and device manufacturers have been constantly testing different business models and forging partnerships on providing application services to business and consumers. It’s a natural evolution that the improved transmission speeds and the expanding of the communications infrastructure of broadband wireless networks are extending functionalities to new and existing applications used by mobile communications devices. The notion of always being connected to your personal social network, containing all types of applications,no matter where you are located, is a very appealing environment for many people and a very large business opportunity for companies providing hardware, applications and infrastructure for mobility services.

As we make batteries smaller and they have less active materials, they are going to have less energy capacity

With the loading of applications, software and feature- rich capabilities on existing high-end phones and smartphones as well as futuristic smartphones, next-generation handheld mobile devices and other portable media-format gadgets, will the issue of power consumption and power management finally come to the forefront and thereby compel all players in the extended communications ecosystem to look anew at battery technologies which really hasn’t changed/evolved much over decades?

Steve Simon: It is very true that battery technology has not changed very much over the last 100 years, especially when you compare it to the tremendous advances that have been made in the microelectronics industry. For a long time, the dramatic technical improvements in the semi conductor industry have been focused on improved performance and miniaturization, without the same level of priority dealing with power consumption and thermal heat issues. When communications and computing devices were used in the home and business environment and you just plugged them into the AC outlet, it was not much of an issue. However, even this always- on approach needs to be improved as the consumption of all forms of power become more expensive and are just wasteful. Hopefully, we will see electronic device manufactures take the same approach that appliance manufacturers are taking; by developing more energy efficient devices for our homes and business.

This, of course, is especially the case when mobile devices need to be powered by an equally small portable power source. We have all had the experience of being frustrated when one of our portable devices runs out of power. It’s a multi-path issue to solve the power consumption problem and electronic devices need to be designed to consume less power and power storage devices have to be designed with improved chemistries and power management systems to optimise what they are capable of providing.

Increasing the battery life of such new- age mobile phones and handheld media devices in order to support a host of multimedia functions and capabilities will be critical. How do key players in the battery technologies and powermanagement domain evangelize the importance of long battery life even while maintaining the predominantly and highly popular commercialised small, low-profile form factor of cell phones, handsets and other mobile devices?

Steve Simon: I would like to see more collaborative interactions from device manufactures and battery developers’ prior to the design of the consumer device; in many cases the battery system is considered as an afterthought. I think that there are potential design synergies and cost savings that can be found by improving the form, fit, and function of the mobile unit and possibly sharing design elements of the system. For example, there could be a tighter coupling of the power management software and hardware running on the devices that could be shared by the power storage system.

As a designer of advanced batteries, we must understand that we are dealing with the laws of physics, and battery performance is directly related to how much active chemistry, the electrolyte and electrode materials can be squeezed into some form factor that packages the battery. From an engineering perspective, as we make batteries smaller and they have less active materials, the consequences are that batteries are going to have less energy capacity to power the devices.There is no one correct power management solution; the solutions are multi-dimensional.

With more and more designs coming to the market and addressing the demands of different market segments in regional markets, all players need to address the key issue of power consumption in next-generation cell phones and hand-held mobile devices. Consequently, how do they configure that with the architectural design trade-off issues and the need for more processing speed to handle rich multimedia applications, services and software? Will there be an accent on developing just custom-designed phones or tailored devices wherein they are loaded only with the most often used features and applications so as to reduce power consumption?

Steve Simon: From a power management perspective, I think that extending the notion of power management needs to occur at both the device and applications level. Not only does there need to be improvements made when choosing subsystem components that consume less power, but this philosophy needs to be extended to the software applications running on the device. On the software side, I think that many improvements can be made by re-prioritising the importance of writing better code that takes reducing power consumption into consideration. For example, you might be able to reduce the power drain on the battery by changing the application software logic on a smartphone, by not activating or suspending application routines that are not being used via improved“sleep mode” software techniques that don’t wake up the hardware.

As a whole host of new form-factor designs of mobile phones and handheld devices evolve, apart from providing faster digital and analog processing speeds and dealing with the ubiquitous convergence of technologies, platforms, services and applications, how do designers and developers also contend with the demand for keeping power consumption low and also account for environmentally-friendly designs? Can you extrapolate from the point of building lower power-consuming, lower-cost and higher-performance cell phones and mobile devices?

Steve Simon: The environmental friendly designs for both the electronic devices and power storage systems are important issues to consider and there are many challenges to overcome. There are clearly environmentally un-friendly materials in many of the electronic devices that are being built and determining the best method for safety and disposal at end of life cycles is needed. The solutions will be extended to reducing hazardous materials used in devices such as lead solder in PC circuit boards which is occurring now, and in eliminating known toxic chemicals such as cadmium metal that were used in early generations rechargeable cell phone batteries. Other technical approaches will need to be taken, such as developing techniques to neutralize potential chemistries used in batteries once they are disposed of, and improved recycling initiatives for electronics to address land fill dumping. Environmental friendly designs are a great opportunity that will benefit all of us in the long run and mPhase Technologies has some interesting patent pending techniques for battery neutralization that we are pursuing.

On the same level, with fast-changing industry dynamics and demands of market forces, will the integratedpower approaches from the power vendors and related domain players be able to keep up with extra system requirements and to deliver new models with shorter time- to- market cycles and quicker commercialisation of new form-factors and designs of cell phones, smartphones and other portable media devices?

Steve Simon: I think that this time-to -market cycle will continue to be challenging. There are many pronouncements of improved portable energy storage advancements being made in the literature and the trade press, with many of the more forward looking research developments and possible breakthroughs coming from university laboratories. Although the potential is great for new advancement, one still needs to temper expectations and understand that there is considerable work that needs to be undertaken to advance laboratory observations into to realworld commercial designs, where reliability, manufacturability and cost become important considerations.

In your opinion, do you think that with the cell phone expected or positioned to be definitive “center of convergence” device of the future (and not necessarily PDAs, BlackbBerries, Portable Media Players), that most of architectural planning will definitely be centered on the cell phone?

Steve Simon: At the high end of the market, I’m not sure what the distinction, if any, between an advanced cell phone and a PDA -like device is and I think the distinction will continue to blur. However, I also personally think that there is a very large independent market for people who just need simple voice communications with no image, video and data features. Just easy- touse voice features, good voice quality and no fancy features and applications.

As a whole new set of buyers and customers are expected for nextgeneration handsets and mobile phones, at what stage of R & D and/or formative stages of development/ideas incubation does battery technology players get involved with designers, handset OEMs and other key players in the ecosystem to discuss and confabulate on power-consumption design issues in order to manufacture a featurerich, multimedia capabilities running phone with extended battery life?

Steve Simon: As I mentioned earlier, I am a big believer in the iterative design approach, and we would welcome more opportunities where we see early stage collaboration happening, even in the concept stage. Technology roadmaps for forward - looking power storage is longer than traditional consumer electronic cycles and large companies and the smaller R&D commercialization companies such as mPhase and others have a lot of potential and fruitful opportunities if we work together earlier in the process.

Can you explain the revolutionary technology that underpins the acceptance, industry amenability, overall commercialisation and future success of the Smart NanoBattery and what such a breakthrough in battery technology means?

Steve Simon: In particular, AlwaysReady, Inc., a subsidiary of mPhase Technologies is investigating a radically different type of reserve battery called the “smart battery.” It is enabled by nanotechnology, microfluidics, and micro-electricalmechanical system fabrication methods (MEMS). The result of this effort is a proprietary membrane made using standard silicon processing techniques used in the semiconductor industry (e.g., lithography and etching) that keeps the electrolyte physically separated from the electrodes until activation when needed. Until then, the battery remains in a quiescent state with no self-discharge, power drain, or leakage to worry about. In a mobile application, we envision our reserve smart battery being used as an emergency or standby power source, used in conjunction with a rechargeable battery. Activation of the smart battery would occur, once the main rechargeable battery reached a point where it could not provide sufficient power to run the electronic device and could automatically activate our reserve battery via an electrical pulse coming from the power management monitoring circuit, thus providing Power On Command™. Depending on the footprint of the smart battery, the reserve battery would provide the user’s device with the needed extra power to complete its action, prior to the main power supply running out of energy.

What specific features of the Smart NanoBattery will enthuse and galvanize the extended wireless/telecom/mobile telephony industry?

Steve Simon: There are basically two types of batteries used in mobile communications systems. Primary batteries are non-rechargeable energy storage units that are thrown away or recycled after discharge. Typica primary batteries include alkaline, lithium, silver oxide, zinc-air, zinccarbon/ zinc-chloride and specialty types. Secondary batteries, which are also known as rechargeable batteries, include nickel-cadmium, nickel-metal hydride, lithium-ion, lead-acid and a range of other types, many of which are based on sophisticated electrochemical systems. Markets for secondary batteries include portable devices, consumer electronics and many other applications. Another specialty type of battery is the reserve battery.

A reserve battery is a primary battery typically designed for a special purpose such as emergency or military use. The electrolyte is usually stored separately from the electrodes which remain in a dry inactive state. The battery is only activated when it is actually needed by introducing the electrolyte into the active cell area containing the electrodes. This has the double benefit of avoiding deterioration of the active materials during storage and eliminating the loss of capacity due to self discharge before use. The battery that we are developing enables significantly longer shelf-life compared to a typical battery (infinite in theory because there is no selfdischarge prior to activation).

This is valuable in situations where reliable power is critical, such as in mobile communications, emergency or medical equipment, and remotely accessible sensors. In addition, in our design, individual cells, or groups of cells, can be independently addressed and therefore turned on at different times or under different operating conditions. A single battery can consist of several sub-cells that can be triggered individually, independent of each other, or sequentially by triggering the next unused cell as each reaches its limit. For instance, a smart battery based on chemistry that typically lasts ten years can have three groups of cells that turn on sequentially as one group exhausts its capacity, thus providing up to 30 years of uninterrupted service.

It also makes practical for the first time the idea of integrating different chemistries (electrodes and electrolytes) into a single system. This potentially allows for a single battery to be built that runs continuously under temperature extremes from very hot to very cold. Advanced configurations could even consist of integration of the battery architecture directly onto the circuit board during the manufacturing process for providing reserved power for electronic devices. In summary, there will be many power solutions available for the emerging mobile communications market and we feel that our solution will be an important element in these future power system designs.

Technology roadmaps for forward -looking power storage are longer than traditional consumer electronic cycles