Full-Duplex Backscatter Interference Networks Based on Time-Hopping Spread Spectrum

Future Internet-of-Things (IoT) is expected to wirelessly connect billions of low-complexity devices. For wireless information transfer (IT) in IoT, high density of IoT devices and their ad hoc communication result in strong interference, which acts as a bottleneck on wireless IT. Furthermore, battery replacement for the massive number of IoT devices is difficult if not infeasible, making wireless energy transfer (ET) desirable. This motivates: 1) the design of full-duplex wireless IT to reduce latency and enable efficient spectrum utilization and 2) the implementation of passive IoT devices using backscatter antennas that enable wireless ET from one device (reader) to another (tag). However, the resultant increase in the density of simultaneous links exacerbates the interference issue. This issue is addressed in this paper by proposing the design of full-duplex backscatter communication (BackCom) networks, where a novel multiple-access scheme based on time-hopping spread-spectrum is designed to enable both one-way wireless ET and two-way wireless IT in coexisting backscatter reader-tag links. Comprehensive performance analysis of BackCom networks is presented in this paper, including forward/backward bit-error rates and wireless ET efficiency and outage probabilities, which accounts for energy harvesting at tags, non-coherent and coherent detection at tags and readers, respectively, and the effects of asynchronous transmissions.