UNIVERSITY OF BRISTOL, BRISTOL UK. The new design for signal amplifiers in the UK might just be the answer to the increasing CO2 emission problems that we are all facing today. With the new design, the developers behind it are aiming to cut about 200MW in the load on UK power stations which could mean decreasing CO2 emissions from it by about 0.5 million tons per year. The research is funded by the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC).

The developers claim that it is actually more efficient by 50 percent as compared to the current designs which are only 30 percent efficient. Currently, there are about 50,000 phone mast base stations in the UK Each phone mast base station has a 40W transmitter which requires at least 130W of power to amplify signals and send them wirelessly to people’s mobiles.

The design also lets the transmitter work effectively while only using 80W of power. The estimated total saving would amount to about half the output of an average-sized 400MW power station if the new amplifier would be used for 10,000 base stations in the UK. These results mean that the new design for signal amplifiers could even mean greater benefits in terms of being energy efficient and carbon-saving at the same time.

The project is led by Dr Kevin Morris. He is also a Reader in Radio Frequency Engineering, Department of Electrical & Electronic Engineering at the University of Bristol. He said that the new amplifier design represents a step change in energy efficiency that could make a really valuable contribution to meeting the UK’s carbon reduction targets.

Their team also successfully simplified the entire amplifier design process. Typically, designing signal amplifiers is a long and complex process which involves a trial-and-error approach and producing one-off solutions. That is one of the main reasons why nobody has even bothered to develop new signal amplifier designs. That is why the developers behind the project made sure that the new design is easily replicable.

They are now working with a major electronics company who will take some of the new signal amplifier’s key findings so that they can use it for the project’s commercialization in the near future.

Image Courtesy of: www.pixabay.com