Researchers at the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Mandi on Thursday said they have developed wireless powering and communication technology that can aid futuristic Internet of Things (IoT) applications remotely. The new tech can help remotely power, in addition to IoT devices, applications such as battery-free wireless cameras, wireless monitors, sensors, skin-attachable sensing platforms, contact lenses, machine-to-machine communication, and human-to-machine interactions, the institute said. The IoT is a collection of objects ("things") that can exchange data with each other through the Internet. IoT devices range from ordinary household appliances in a "smart" home to sophisticated industrial and scientific tools. These smart things are equipped with sensors, chips, and software that must be powered and stay in communication with other devices at all times. Simplistic power sources such as batteries may be unsuitable for such applications because of the constancy of power required, and because some of these "things" may be embedded or hidden, which makes changing batteries difficult. There is, thus, a worldwide research in combining remote communication technology with remote powering options. The IIT Mandi team performed research on two such powering options - radio frequency energy harvesting (RF-EH) and backscatter communication.