Next generation backscatter communication: systems, techniques, and applications

TLDR

The rapid expansion of IoT, driven by consumer electronics, 5G, and cloud analytics, has highlighted the challenge of limited device battery life, prompting interest in low‑power backscatter communication as a promising but currently limited solution. The article surveys recent advances in next‑generation backscatter communication. It systematically reviews the principles, systems, techniques, and IoT application scenarios of next‑generation backscatter communication.

Abstract

The rapid growth of IoT driven by recent advancements in consumer electronics, 5G communication technologies, and cloud-computing-enabled big data analytics, has recently attracted tremendous attention from both the industry and academia. One of the major open challenges for IoT is the limited network lifetime due to massive IoT devices being powered by batteries with finite capacities. The low-power and low-complexity backscatter communications (BackCom), which simply relies on passive reflection and modulation of an incident radio-frequency (RF) wave, has emerged to be a promising technology for tackling this challenge. However, the contemporary BackCom has several major limitations, such as short transmission range, low data rate, and uni-directional information transmission. The article aims at introducing the recent advances in the active area of BackCom. Specifically, we provide a systematic introduction of the next generation BackCom covering basic principles, systems, techniques besides IoT applications. Lastly, we describe the IoT application scenarios with the next generation BackCom.