NetScatter: Enabling Large-Scale Backscatter Networks

TLDR

The paper introduces the first wireless protocol that scales to hundreds of concurrent backscatter transmissions. The protocol uses a distributed coding scheme that operates below the noise floor on backscatter devices and decodes all concurrent transmissions at the receiver with a single FFT, while handling timing, frequency synchronization, and the near‑far problem. In a testbed, the protocol supports 256 concurrent devices over 500 kHz, achieving 14–62× higher throughput, 15–67× lower latency, and 1–2 orders of magnitude greater concurrency than prior methods.

Abstract

We present the first wireless protocol that scales to hundreds of concurrent transmissions from backscatter devices. Our key innovation is a distributed coding mechanism that works below the noise floor, operates on backscatter devices and can decode all the concurrent transmissions at the receiver using a single FFT operation. Our design addresses practical issues such as timing and frequency synchronization as well as the near-far problem. We deploy our design using a testbed of backscatter hardware and show that our protocol scales to concurrent transmissions from 256 devices using a bandwidth of only 500 kHz. Our results show throughput and latency improvements of 14--62x and 15--67x over existing approaches and 1--2 orders of magnitude higher transmission concurrency.