Low-Cost and Long-Range Node-Assisted WiFi Backscatter Communication for 5G-Enabled IoT Networks

The fifth-generation-enabled Internet of Things (5G-enabled IoT) has been considered as a key enabler for the automation of almost all industries. In 5G-enabled IoT, resource-limited passive devices are expected to join the IoT using the WiFi backscatter communication (WiFi-BSC) technology. However, WiFi-BSC deployment is currently limited due to high equipment cost and short transmission range. To address these two drawbacks, in this paper, we propose a low-cost and long-range node-assisted WiFi backscatter communication scheme. In our scheme, a WiFi node can receive backscatter signals using two cheap regular half-duplex antennas (instead of using expensive full-duplex technique or collaborating with multiple other nodes), thereby reducing the equipment cost. Besides, WiFi nodes can help relay backscatter signals to remote 5G infrastructure, greatly extending the backscatter’s transmission range. We then develop a theoretical model to analyze the throughput of WiFi-BSC. Extensive simulations verify the effectiveness of our scheme and the accuracy of our model.