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Today we have lots of battery free electronic devices such as RFID which in most cases gets powered wirelessly from the reader. What would the world of electronics be like if our small electronics that only consumed a small amount of energy could be powered by the RF signals that are already around us. Ambient Backscatter does just this and has an endless number of interesting applications. Just think of the possibilities of device placement if servicing batteries was no longer a concern. In our modern cities we have no lack of RF noise so device placement should not be an issue.
I have no knowledge in this field so hopefully someone can chime in here. If this becomes popular and we have tens of thousands of these devices all over the place will the load on transmission towers increase due to this power leaching? Will TV and cell towers need to increase their power output to achieve the same coverage as they had before these devices were being used?
 “Ambient Backscatter transforms existing wireless signals into both a source of power and a communication medium. It enables two battery-free devices to communicate by backscattering existing wireless signals. Backscatter communication is orders of magnitude more power-efficient than traditional radio communication.”