A Remotely Programmable Modular Testbed for Backscatter Sensor Network Research

The necessity of backscatter sensor networks (BSNs) has recently emerged due to the need for large-scale, ultra low-cost, ultra low-power, wireless sensing. Development of such networks requires tools for rapid prototyping and evaluation of key-enabling BSN technologies. Although tools for testing wireless sensor networks (WSNs) have been widely developed over the last few years in the form of testbeds, almost no significant testbed examples exist for BSNs. Throughout this work, a set of hardware, firmware and software components have been designed and implemented, creating a BSN research testbed. The latter employs a modular architecture and enables rapid prototyping of critical components for low-cost, large-scale BSNs. Testbed components enable microwave, detection, coding and multiple access research, tailored for backscatter radio and networking. The testbed offers dynamic reconfiguration through implementation of remote, over the air programming (OTAP), that reduced programming time per node by two orders of magnitude. An overview of the testbed is given, and its modular tools are described in terms of functionality and importance for BSN research.