Work

Sub-Symbol Backscatter Using CCK Signal in WiFi

Year: 2025

Type: article

Abstract: Throughput is a critical performance metric in backscatter communication systems. Existing approaches either suffer from limited throughput or necessitate modifications to transmitters or receivers, leading to incompatibility with commodity radios. In this paper, we introduce SubScatter, a system that achieves both high throughput and excellent compatibility. It employs a single Complementary Code Keying (CCK)-modulated 802.11b WiFi symbol to transmit eight tag bits by manipulating the phase of the backscattered signal across eight discrete time slots within the symbol, thereby enhancing throughput. To ensure compatibility with commercial-off-the-shelf (COTS) radios, SubScatter exclusively utilizes the physical service data unit (PSDU) for recovering the backscatter modulation that conveys the tag bits. Additionally, SubScatter employs real-time Hamming distance calculations to synchronize the binary envelope from the synchronization circuit with a reference sequence, facilitating the sub-symbol backscatter modulation. In addition, we emphasize SubScatter’s versatility in adapting its modulation scheme to optimize performance across various channel conditions. Extensive experiments conducted with our prototype validate its effectiveness, achieving a throughput approximately 11 times higher than that of leading backscatter systems compatible with COTS radios. Our Hamming-distance-based synchronization method outperforms conventional designs that rely solely on signal power detection, successfully reducing the bit error rate (BER) from over 10% to below 1%. Moreover, SubScatter’s throughput can be flexibly adjusted from 11 Mbps to 1.57 Mbps, while the BER improves from 0.29% to 0.04%.

Source: IEEE Transactions on Networking

DOI: 10.1109/ton.2025.3619500

Authors: Longzhi Yuan, Hangcheng Cao, Wei Gong, Yuguang Fang

Institutions: City University of Hong Kong, University of Science and Technology of China

Language: English

Topic: Energy Harvesting in Wireless Networks

Subfield: Electrical and Electronic Engineering

Field: Engineering

Domain: Physical Sciences

SDG: Industry, innovation and infrastructure

Open Access status: green

Funder: National Natural Science Foundation of China