Article

Passive Wi-Fi: bringing low power to Wi-Fi transmissions

Authors:

Bryce Kellogg,

Vamsi Talla,

Shyamnath Gollakota,

Joshua R. SmithAuthors Info & Claims

NSDI'16: Proceedings of the 13th Usenix Conference on Networked Systems Design and Implementation

Pages 151 - 164

Published: 16 March 2016 Publication History

Abstract

Wi-Fi has traditionally been considered a power-consuming communication system and has not been widely adopting in the sensor network and IoT space. We introduce Passive Wi-Fi that demonstrates for the first time that one can generate 802.11b transmissions using backscatter communication, while consuming 3- 4 orders of magnitude lower power than existing Wi-Fi chipsets. Passive Wi-Fi transmissions can be decoded on any Wi-Fi device including routers, mobile phones and tablets. Building on this, we also present a network stack design that enables passive Wi-Fi transmitters to coexist with other devices in the ISM band, without incurring the power consumption of carrier sense and medium access control operations. We build prototype hardware and implement all four 802.11b bit rates on an FPGA platform. Our experimental evaluation shows that passive Wi-Fi transmissions can be decoded on off-the-shelf smartphones and Wi-Fi chipsets over distances of 30-100 feet in various line-of- sight and through-the-wall scenarios. Finally, we design a passive Wi-Fi IC that shows that 1 and 11 Mbps transmissions consume 14.5 and 59.2 µW respectively. This translates to 10000x lower power than existing Wi-Fi chipsets and 1000x lower power than Bluetooth LTE and ZigBee.

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Varshney A(2022)Making Low-Power and Long-Range Wireless Backscatter TransmittersGetMobile: Mobile Computing and Communications10.1145/3551670.355167226:2(5-11)Online publication date: 25-Jul-2022
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Index Terms

Passive Wi-Fi: bringing low power to Wi-Fi transmissions
1. Networks
  1. Network types
    1. Mobile networks
    2. Wireless access networks

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Reviews

Reviewer: Bayard Kohlhepp

Low-power Wi-Fi fills a definite need in the Internet of Things (IoT) infrastructure, and this paper's ideas advance its evolution. While consumer IoT is built atop "large" devices (Linux/Android/iOS with 4-plus GB of RAM) with big batteries, the industrial IoT (IIoT) is built on much smaller, cheaper devices (32-bit RTOS, 256MB RAM). In this world of small sensors, power consumption and battery life are the most difficult design constraints. Decreasing communication power by a factor of four or five would be an outstanding innovation, opening the door to new applications. By way of example, I'm currently working on an IIoT project that uses clusters of central, wired access points (APs) talking to six to eight battery-powered sensors. We're using 802.15.4 (Zigbee-like) radios to stretch battery life to over three years. If we could switch our sensor radios to the authors' passive Wi-Fi radios, we would double our sensor lifespan. Moreover, native Wi-Fi would connect us directly to operators, avoiding an extra-cost, special-purpose gateway. This paper completely fulfills our next-generation design goals. The test results look great, and the paper is easy to read from both technical and nontechnical perspectives. Anyone involved in IoT design, or especially IIoT, should stop and take a look at the authors' work. Online Computing Reviews Service

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Information & Contributors

Information

Published In

NSDI'16: Proceedings of the 13th Usenix Conference on Networked Systems Design and Implementation

March 2016

699 pages

ISBN:9781931971294

Program Chairs:
Katerina Argyraki
EPFL
,
Rebecca Isaacs
Google

Publisher

USENIX Association

United States

Publication History

Published: 16 March 2016

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Liu XWang WSong GZhu TCalandrino JTroncoso C(2023)LightThiefProceedings of the 32nd USENIX Conference on Security Symposium10.5555/3620237.3620535(5325-5339)Online publication date: 9-Aug-2023
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Varshney A(2022)Making Low-Power and Long-Range Wireless Backscatter TransmittersGetMobile: Mobile Computing and Communications10.1145/3551670.355167226:2(5-11)Online publication date: 25-Jul-2022
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Guo BZuo WWang SLyu WHong ZDing YHe TZhang D(2022)WePosProceedings of the ACM on Interactive, Mobile, Wearable and Ubiquitous Technologies10.1145/35345746:2(1-25)Online publication date: 7-Jul-2022
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