Year: 2024
Type: article
Abstract: Backscattering is a promising power-efficient communication technique providing sustainable wireless links with a low carbon footprint. This approach is a critical enabler for dense IoT networks, which are forecast to grow to 41 billion by 2025. However, existing backscatter designs are limited to the sub-6 GHz bands or narrowband operation in the millimeter-wave regime; therefore, they fail to concurrently support many interference-free low-power users. Enabling a frequency-agile wideband backscatter design in the sub-terahertz offers a two-pronged advantage for densely deployed backscatter networks: spatial reuse enabled by directionality and frequency multiplexing enabled by the large available bandwidth. We present the first sub-THz backscatter architecture that operates above 100 GHz. Our design relies on a detailed understanding of reciprocity in leaky-wave devices and offers a realistic joint localization and communication protocol for sub-THz backscatter networks. This study presents the first sub-THz retrodirective wideband backscatter. Instead of phased arrays, it uses key properties of leaky waveguides, i.e., frequency-angle dependency and reciprocity for wideband retro directivity with ultra-low power.
Source: Nature Communications
Institutions: Princeton University, Rice University, Brown University
Language: English
Subfield: Electrical and Electronic Engineering
Field: Engineering
Domain: Physical Sciences
Open Access status: gold
Estimated APC paid: $6,790
Awards: G1523888516, G2049620319, Collaborative Research: CNS Core: Medium: Access, Mobility, and Security above 100 GHz, Collaborative Research: CNS Core: Large: Scaling WLANs to TB/sec: THz Spectrum, Architectures, and Control, AGILE, LOW-POWER, RECONFIGURABLE, AND LARGE-SCALE WIRELESS TERAHERTZ BACKSCATTER NETWORKS, RINGS: Resilient mmWave Networks via Distributed In-Surface Computing (mmRISC), G7090116110, RECONFIGURABLE LEAKY-WAVE ANTENNA FOR TERAHERTZ BEAM FORMING, CAREER: Agile, Adaptable, and ScalableWireless Terahertz Networks: Architecture and Control, G991889912
OpenAlex ID: W4403272111