Designing a Bistatic Backscatter Communications System with

OFDM for 6G Internet of Things

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17-07-2023 / 20-07-2023

CITATION

Lopez, Miguel; He, Ning; Khan, Talha (2023). Designing a Bistatic Backscatter Communications System with
OFDM for 6G Internet of Things. TechRxiv. Preprint. https://doi.org/10.36227/techrxiv.23699631.v1

DOI

10.36227/techrxiv.23699631.v1
 Designing a Bistatic Backscatter Communications
System with OFDM for 6G Internet of Things
Miguel Lopez, Ning He, and Talha Ahmed Khan
Ericsson Research
Emails: {miguel.m.lopez, ning.he, talha.khan}@ericsson.com

Abstract—Backscatter communications can enable the prolif- which operates opportunistically, ZE-IoT connectivity will be
eration of Zero-energy (ZE) Internet of Things (IoT) services in rolled out as a service by the cellular network. Therefore,
6G, ushering in a new era in green communications. To achieve another research challenge is to explore the degrees of freedom
a widescale adoption, backscatter communications needs to be
integrated into the cellular ecosystem. This motivates the need in the transmitter, the tag, and the receiver to design an efficient
to design a bistatic backscatter modulation technique which is not non-ambient cellular backscatter network.
only compatible with the 3GPP New Radio (NR) physical layer
but also robust to direct link interference. In this paper, a non- A. Related Work
ambient bistatic backscatter communications system consisting The design of ambient backscatter communications systems
of a cellular carrier emitter (CE), a backscatter device (BD)
and a cellular reader (RD) is investigated. An analytical model for OFDM waveforms has received considerable attention
is presented to explain the design rationale for an orthogonal in the existing literature [2–9]. In [4], a novel modulation
frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) based physical layer scheme inspired by spread spectrum systems was devised to
for the considered system. Specifically, to achieve orthogonality cancel direct link interference by leveraging the time-domain
between the CE and BD signals arriving concurrently at the repetition due to cyclic prefix (CP) in an OFDM signal, and its
RD, a comb-like OFDM subcarrier allocation is leveraged at the
CE while a specially designed impedance switching sequence is performance was evaluated for an optimal detector. Unlike the
applied at the BD to generate OFDM-compatible backscatter prior work which treated direct link signal as interference, a
symbols with a binary or higher-order phase shift keying modu- cooperative ambient backscatter system based on OFDM was
lation. The link performance of the proposed system is evaluated proposed in [5] to enable the receiver to recover information
in terms of the achievable bit error rate versus the signal-to-noise received over the direct link as well as the backscatter link.
ratio at the RD for the CE-RD link and the BD-RD link under
direct link interference. Simulation results confirm the viability The system performance was studied using analytical and
of the proposed design for a cellular ZE-IoT system. simulation results. In [6], utilizing the null subcarriers in an
OFDM symbol, binary and higher order modulation schemes
I. I NTRODUCTION with non-coherent energy detection were proposed for an am-
Backscatter communications can accelerate the proliferation bient backscatter system. In [7], an ambient OFDM backscatter
of Zero-energy (ZE) Internet of Things (IoT) in the 6G era system with binary frequency shift keying modulation and
[1–3]. Although widely used in radio frequency identification noncoherent detection was investigated. In [8], an ambient
(RFID) systems, backscatter communications needs to over- bistatic backscatter system was studied that exploited the pilot
come several challenges before its adoption in the broader symbols in a legacy OFDM system for channel estimation. The
cellular ecosystem. Firstly, it should be compatible with or- system performance for phase shift keying (PSK) and delay
thogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM), which is shift keying was evaluated assuming a maximum likelihood
an essential ingredient of cellular transmitters and receivers. detector. In [9], a subcarrier-wise modulation scheme was
Ideally, a backscatter tag should be able to communicate proposed for an OFDM-based ambient backscatter system
using an incident OFDM signal that a traditional OFDM assuming a bank of notch filters at the backscatter device.
receiver can decode—without increasing the tag complexity. The design flexibility in [8][9], however, was achieved at the
Secondly, it should be able to operate in an interference-limited expense of an increased backscatter tag hardware complexity
scenario. This is especially true for a cellular bistatic backscat- which may be infeasible to implement in practice.
ter architecture consisting of a legacy cellular transmitter, a
backscatter tag, and a cellular receiver node. The receiver B. Contributions
needs to decode the signals reflected by the backscatter node The advent of 6G provides new opportunities to revolution-
amid the signal directly received from the transmitter. The ize the cellular IoT landscape by supporting ZE-IoT devices.
backscattered signal arriving at the receiver, however, is orders 3GPP is currently conducting a preliminary study on cellular
of magnitude weaker than the legacy cellular signal received ZE-IoT systems [10], which will pave the way for the 6G
over the direct link. Thirdly, the existing cellular system proto- ZE-IoT standardization in the future. There is, however, lim-
cols may need to be simplified for backscatter communications ited research on investigating the performance of backscatter
while maintaining synergies with the overall cellular system communications using a 3GPP-compatible physical layer. In
architecture. Finally, unlike an ambient backscatter system this paper, we propose a non-ambient bistatic backscatter
communications system compatible with the 3GPP New Radio expressed in the discrete domain as
(NR) waveform. Leveraging the OFDM symbol structure in ζ jπ(2n+1)M jπ(2n+1)M

both time and frequency domains, we adopt a comb-like sub-

X e N − e− N
c[m] ≈ A (2)
carrier allocation at the legacy OFDM transmitter to facilitate n=0
2n + 1
backscatter communications. We also devise novel binary and
for m = 0, · · · , N − 1, where the approximation follows
higher-order PSK modulation schemes for the backscattered
from the truncation of the infinite series to ζ terms. Although
signal which are robust to direct link interference and timing
a perfect square wave occupies an infinite bandwidth, it is
synchronization errors. We evaluate the link performance of
sufficient to consider only a few harmonics in practice. As
the proposed system for binary phase shift keying (BPSK) and
the fundamental frequency component of a 50% duty-cycled
quadrature phase shift keying (QPSK) with a coherent receiver
square wave contains nearly 80% of its total energy [11], we
under various interference conditions. Unlike the prior work
let ζ = 0 and neglect the higher order harmonics to simplify
[4–9], the proposed design for an OFDM-compatible backscat-
the ensuing analysis. In Section IV, we do consider all the
ter modulation is flexible, relaxes the timing synchronization
harmonics within the receiver bandwidth in the simulations.
requirements at the tag, and enables subcarrier-level multiple
access without increasing the backscatter tag complexity. Let us denote the frequency domain OFDM samples for
−1
the p-th OFDM symbol at the CE as {Xp [k]}N k=0 , and
the baseband equivalent time domain samples (before CP
II. S YSTEM AND S IGNAL M ODELS −1
insertion) as {xp [m]}Nm=0 . Ignoring the CP samples, we let
up [m] = cp [m]xp [m] be the product of the p-th OFDM symbol
We consider a bistatic backscatter communications system and the corresponding switching sequence applied at the BD
consisting of a carrier emitter (CE) node, a backscatter device such that
(BD) node, and a reader (RD) (or receiver) node. The CE and  jπM jπM

RD are assumed to be compatible with the 5G NR physical up [m] = Axp [m] e N − e− N (3)
layer, i.e., they can transmit or receive NR signals. We denote
for m = 0, · · · , N − 1. Invoking the circular shift property
the OFDM subcarrier spacing at the CE as ∆f = 1/TOFDM
of the discrete Fourier transform (DFT), the DFT of the time
and the OFDM symbol duration (including the CP) using
domain signal up [·] is given by
TCP + TOFDM , where TCP is the CP duration. We use N to     
denote the number of subcarriers such that the sampling rate M M
Up [k] = A Xp k + + Xp k − (4)
is 1/Ts = N ∆f . We assume that all the nodes are equipped 2 2
with a single transmit/receive antenna. We further assume that
for k = 0, · · · , N − 1. This shows that the square wave
the BD can switch between two distinct antenna impedances
◦ ◦ switching sequence translates the spectrum of the incident
at a rate S which induces a phase shift of 0 or 180 in the
signal by ±M ∆f /2, which is an integer multiple of the
backscattered signal. To simplify the analysis, we assume that
subcarrier spacing.
the impedances are ideal. The switching rate influences the
characteristics of the backscattered signal. For example, let us We now examine how applying circular shifts to the switch-
assume that the BD generates a baseband switching signal with ing sequence cp [·] impacts the reflected signal. Let us assume
a pre-determined bit duration 1/S which results in a periodic that the sequence ĉp [m] = cp [m − v] is obtained by rotating
switching pattern with period 2/S during the duration of an cp [m] by an integer v. By setting v = N Q , we induce a phase
πM
OFDM symbol. When this signal modulates the state of the shift of magnitude Q in the backscattered symbol. If Ûp [·]
switch, it results in a mixing of the carrier frequency of the denotes the DFT of ûp [·] = ĉp [·]xp [·], then
impinging radio frequency (RF) signal with a frequency S/2.  
M
 
M

− jπM jπM
This yields a reflected signal which contains two images of the Ûp [k] = A e Q Xp k + +e Q Xp k − .
2 2
incident signal in the frequency domain at frequency offsets (5)
±S/2 relative to the incident signal.
To formally describe this phenomenon, let us model the Therefore, successively rotating each rotated switching se-
time domain switching signal used by the BD as a square wave quence by the same amount N Q will yield Q unique phase
Q−1
c(t) = sign [sin (πSt)] of frequency S2 , where we intentionally shifts: { `πM
Q }`=0 . For instance, by setting M = 2 and Q = 4,
define the switching rate S = M ∆f as an (even) integer we can obtain four unique phase shifts: {0, π2 , π, 3π
2 }.
multiple M ≥ 2 of the OFDM subcarrier spacing. Using After removing the CP and applying the DFT, the frequency
Fourier series expansion, it can be equivalently expressed as domain samples {Yp [k]}N −1
k=0 of the received signal at the RD
can be expressed as
∞
X ejπ(2n+1)M ∆f t − e−jπ(2n+1)M ∆f t CR
Yp [k] = Hp,k CB BR
Xp [k − γCE ] + Wp [k] + αAHp,k Hp,k
c(t) = A (1)
n=0
2n + 1 
jπM

M

jπM

M

× e− Q Xp k + − γ + e Q Xp k − −γ
where A = jπ2
. If we ignore the first NCP = TCP /Ts samples 2 2
corresponding to the CP duration, the switching signal can be (6)
 CB BR CR
where Hp,k , Hp,k , and Hp,k denote the frequency domain
channels experienced by the k-th subcarrier over the CE-BD,
the BD-RD and the CE-RD links, respectively. The frequency
errors at the CE and the BD manifest in the received signal at
Fig. 1: An illustration of the comb-like subcarrier allocation
the RD as γCE and γBD , respectively. We define γ = γCE +γBD ,
at the CE with 3 inactive subcarriers (dots) between two
and W [k] as the circularly symmetric complex additive white
active subcarriers (dashed arrows). The active subcarriers in
Gaussian noise (AWGN) at the receiver in the frequency
the reflected signal after a translation of ∆f at the BD are
domain. The parameter α denotes the backscatter tag reflection
also shown (solid arrows).
factor which is sufficiently small such that the reflected signal
is much weaker than the direct link signal.
Notation. For a binary sequence [b1 , · · · , bn ] of length of TOFDM /M . This means that for each bit in the baseband
n and a positive integer m, we let [b1 , · · · , bn ]m denote switching signal, the BD selects a certain impedance for a
a sequence of length mn which is obtained my repeating duration TOFDM /M , and then either remains in the same state
[b1 , · · · , bn ] m times, e.g., [b1 , · · · , bn ]1 = [b1 , · · · , bn ] and or switches to the other impedance depending on the value of
[b1 , · · · , bn ]2 = [b1 , · · · , bn , b1 , · · · , bn ]. We further define the next bit in the baseband switching signal. The parameter
1m = [1]m (or 0m = [0]m ) as a shorthand notation for a K defines the number of incident OFDM symbols used for
length m sequence where all entries are 1 (or 0). carrying one backscatter modulation symbol. Using a larger K
helps obtain a processing gain while also enabling the receiver
III. P HYSICAL LAYER DESIGN
to handle relatively large timing misalignment errors between
In this section, we describe the physical layer design the backscattered and the direct link signals (as explained in
rationale for the proposed non-ambient bistatic backscatter Section III-C).
communications system. We first present a method to achieve
orthogonality between OFDM signals originating from the CE B. Designing M-ary PSK backscatter modulation
and the BD. We then propose a novel scheme to generate In this section, we propose techniques to generate backscat-
backscattered signal with BPSK or a higher-order PSK mod- tered signals with BPSK and higher-order PSK modulation,
ulation while maintaining orthogonality with the direct link while maintaining orthogonality between the backscattered
signal at the receiver. and the direct link signals.
1) BPSK: We propose a novel method to generate a BPSK
A. Achieving orthogonal transmission modulated backscattered signal using the incident wideband
To design a robust bistatic backscatter communications sys- NR OFDM waveform while maintaining orthogonality be-
tem capable of operating under severe direct link interference, tween the backscattered signal and the CE transmit signal.
we leverage the OFDM symbol structure in the time and To achieve this, we map each baseband data bit to a carefully
frequency domains to devise orthogonal signals for the CE and selected binary switching sequence [0, 1] of length 2 to switch
the BD. We first illustrate the proposed design with an example the antenna impedance: A data bit value of “0” corresponds
M
in Figure 1 before formalizing it. Specifically, the CE transmits to a switching sequence [0, 1] 2 of length M with a switching
an OFDM signal where active subcarriers are periodically bit duration of TOFDM /M , which will translate the incident
spaced according to a comb pattern in the frequency domain. OFDM signal by an amount M ∆f /2 in the frequency domain.
In this example, there are three inactive subcarriers (at least Similarly, to encode the data bit value of “1”, the switching
two are needed) inserted between each pair of adjacent active sequence is obtained by circularly shifting the base sequence
M
subcarriers to accommodate the backscattered signal in the fre- [0,1], i.e., using the sequence [1, 0] 2 with bit duration
quency domain—which is translated by an integer multiple of TOFDM /M will also result in a frequency translation by the
◦
subcarrier spacing. We note that the information carried by the same amount M ∆f /2, albeit with a phase shift of 180 in
active subcarriers does not impact the proposed design, e.g., the reflected signal with respect to the previous switching
the active subcarriers may contain training symbols known sequence. To preserve the CP in the incident OFDM signal,
to the RD, or unknown data and NR demodulation reference the switching sequence applied to the last NCP samples is also
signals (DMRS) intended for the RD. The inactive subcarriers used for the first NCP samples of that OFDM symbol.
are reserved for backscattering. As shown in Section II, if To generate identical backscattered signals across K con-
the BD switches at a rate S = 2∆f , the impinging signal secutive incident OFDM symbols, the switching sequence can
undergoes a frequency translation by S = 2∆f . Thus, the be repeated K times (i.e., the same base sequence is used
CE signal and the backscattered signal are orthogonal in the for each of the K incident OFDM symbols) to obtain a
frequency domain. binary switching sequence of length M K. In this way, the BD
Formally, we parameterize the physical layer using two can generate an OFDM signal carrying a sequence of BPSK
positive integers M and K. The even-valued parameter M symbols, which is orthogonal to the incident NR OFDM signal
controls the magnitude of the frequency shift in the reflected thanks to the specially designed comb pattern.
signal with respect to the impinging signal. The BD utilizes a 2) M-ary PSK: We generalize the idea proposed for BPSK
switching frequency of M ∆f which yields a switching period to generate a backscattered OFDM signal with M-ary PSK
modulation, which is orthogonal to the incident NR signal. the BD uses a pre-determined baseband bit sequence (e.g., 0L )
To achieve M-ary modulation where M = 2L and L ≥ 1 which is also known to the RD. We assume that the RD uses
denotes the modulation order, we set the impedance switching a conventional OFDM receiver and knows the comb pattern
rate to LM ∆f . We derive the baseband switching signal from used at the CE. The receiver first demodulates and detects the
a specially designed binary base sequence [02L−1 , 12L−1 ] of frequency domain data symbols carried by the direct link CE
length 2L with 2L−1 zeros followed by 2L−1 ones. That is, a signal. Then, it removes the effect of the detected CE data
baseband data bit sequence of length L (e.g., 0L ) at the BD symbols from the composite received signal, and detects the
M
is mapped to a binary switching sequence [02L−1 , 12L−1 ] 2 . M-ary backscattered symbols in the signal received from the
Although the switching bit duration for M-ary modulation BD.
has reduced (as compared to BPSK) by a factor 2L−1 to We do not assume any prior knowledge about the channel
TOFDM /(M 2L−1 ), the periodicity of the resulting square wave state information at the BD and RD. After CP removal, the
is still 2TOFDM /M thanks to the pattern selected for the RD first converts the time domain baseband received signal to
switching sequence. As a result, it will still translate the the frequency domain and estimates the carrier frequency and
impinging signal by an amount M ∆f /2 in the frequency phase offsets between the CE and the RD. It also estimates
domain. We note that there are exactly 2L unique sequences the frequency domain channels for the CE-RD and the BD-
that can be obtained from the sequence [02L−1 , 12L−1 ] by RD links using the NR DMRS pilot symbols transmitted by
circular shifts. As each sequence in this set of M sequences the CE. With prior knowledge of the comb pattern, it then
corresponds to a unique phase shift (see Section II), a set of M selects the active subcarriers transmitted by the CE and detects
symbols can be constructed to realize M-ary PSK modulation. the data symbols carried by the frequency domain samples
−1
To achieve a combining gain and additional robustness to {Xp [k]}Nk=0 for the p-th OFDM symbol after equalizing the
timing errors, the switching pattern can be repeated K times channel. This procedure is repeated for all the OFDM symbols
across K OFDM symbols to obtain a binary sequence of within the RD’s receive window.
length M 2L−1 K. For each active subcarrier in the frequency domain comb
For example, to achieve a frequency translation of ∆f (i.e., pattern, the RD selects both the subcarriers located at fre-
M∆
M = 2) with QPSK (L = 2) without symbol repetition quency offsets of ± 2 f relative to the location of the active
(K = 1), there are four patterns that can be obtained by circu- subcarrier. It equalizes the signal to remove the impact of
larly shifting the base sequence [0,0,1,1]: [0,0,1,1], [1,0,0,1], phase rotation and amplitude distortion due to the active
[1,1,0,0], [0,1,1,0]. As these four switching sequences induce subcarrier. Specifically, the frequency domain samples for
M∆
four uniformly spaced phase shifts (spaced by π/2) in the the subcarriers located at frequency offsets of ± 2 f are
reflected signal, they can be used to generate QPSK symbols. multiplied with the complex conjugate of the estimated sample
Moreover, for QPSK, we can leverage Gray encoding when carried by the corresponding active subcarrier. The next step
mapping the modulation symbols to phase shifts. Further- is to determine the number of OFDM symbols, ncoh , that can
more, to generate QPSK modulation symbols with repeti- be combined coherently at the receiver. With ncoh = K for
tion such as for K = 2, the resulting switching patterns the received backscattered signal, all the K OFDM symbols
would be [0,0,1,1,0,0,1,1], [1,0,0,1,1,0,0,1], [1,1,0,0,1,1,0,0] carrying the same backscattered symbol can be combined
and [0,1,1,0,0,1,1,0]. coherently if τ ≤ TCP . Otherwise, up to K −1 OFDM symbols
out of the total K OFDM symbols need to be dropped.
C. Demodulation and detection For example, if TCP < τ ≤ TCP + TOFDM , we can set
In this subsection, we outline the essential steps needed ncoh = K − 1 and drop the first symbol in a group of K
to decode and detect the information transmitted by the CE OFDM symbols. This also explains how the proposed system
and BD nodes. The composite baseband received signal at offers robustness to timing synchronization errors at the BD:
the RD, as shown in (6), is a superposition of the direct the larger the repetition factor K, the larger the amount of
link signal from the CE and the signal reflected from the the timing misalignment error τ between the signals received
BD. As described in the previous sections, the CE transmits from the CE and the BD that the RD can tolerate. The next
an NR OFDM signal containing the data and the DMRS step is to perform coherent combining over the ncoh OFDM
pilot symbols according to the NR frame structure where the symbols and across all the subcarriers corresponding to the
data or pilots are carried by the active subcarriers of each backscattered signal. Finally, the backscattered M-ary PSK
OFDM data or pilot symbol. We assume that the BD and symbol can be detected by feeding the combined signal to a
RD know the configuration parameters {K, L, M } and the maximum likelihood detector.
periodicity of the OFDM pilot symbols (e.g., they know that
every q-th OFDM symbol in a slot is a pilot symbol). This D. Extension to multiuser scenario
is a realistic assumption widely adopted in practical cellular In the previous sections, we have elaborated the proposed
systems since information related to parameter configuration concept for a single BD. In practice, there can be numer-
can be transmitted by the base station. Similarly, the control ous BDs served by a common CE and RD. The proposed
node in an RFID system also provides parameter configuration framework can be extended to enable orthogonal frequency
to the RFID tags [12]. For reflecting the OFDM pilot symbols, division multiple access (OFDMA) to simultaneously serve
 as the ratio of the received power of the composite received
BD 0 0 1
signal (consisting of the backscattered and direct link signals)
BD 1 0 0
Δ to the noise power within the received signal bandwidth. We
CE
Δ normalize the CE transmit power to unity and adjust α to set
BD 1 0 0
CIR to the simulated value, and add AWGN noise with the
BD 0 0 1
0 0 1
requisite power to the composite received signal to achieve the
Frequency domain

BD
BD 1 0 0 2Δ
simulated SNR value.
CE The backscatter node randomly generates a packet consist-
BD 1 0 0 ing of 140 bits (120 data bits and 20 control bits), which are
BD 0 0 1 mapped to 140 BPSK or 80 QPSK backscatter modulation
BD 0 0 1 symbols. With each backscatter modulation symbol spanning
BD 1 0 0 K = 4 NR OFDM symbols, 560 (BPSK) or 320 (QPSK) NR
CE OFDM symbols are needed to transmit the packet. This leads
BD 1 0 0
to a backscatter link data transmission rate of around 3 kbps
BD 0 0 1
for BPSK and 5.24 kbps for QPSK.
Time domain
B. Channel impairments
Fig. 2: An illustration of the received signal at the RD
with OFDMA for two BDs: BD1 (blue) and BD2 (yellow) We consider two different channel models for the links: i)
backscatter the same CE’s OFDM signal (gray) using BPSK AWGN and ii) a multipath channel model with an exponential
and K = 4. BD1 translates the signal by ∆f and BD2 by power delay profile parameterized by a root mean squared
2∆f . The baseband data bits for each backscattered symbol channel delay spread of 50 ns. We note that such models
are also shown. are plausible for a bistatic backscatter deployment in an
industrial environment. We also account for the phase and
frequency errors due to hardware impairments at each node.
up to χ BDs. The CE will transmit an OFDM signal with In particular, we draw the transmit carrier frequency offset at
a comb pattern similar to the single BD case, but each BD the CE uniformly randomly from the interval [-100, 100] Hz.
will be assigned a unique parameter {Mz }χz=1 such that it As BD is a low-complexity device, we consider a relatively
translates the incident NR signal to a different subcarrier. large maximum frequency error of 103 ppm at the BD, which
Consequently, two or more BDs can simultaneously reflect translates to an absolute frequency error (103 ppm × LM ∆f )
the incident OFDM signal from the same CE to othogonal of [-30, 30] Hz for BPSK or [-60, 60] Hz for QPSK. Moreover,
subcarriers and the recipient RD can decode the signal from we model the transmitter phase noise at the CE and the
each BD in the frequency domain. The idea is illustrated in receiver phase noise at the RD using the models in [13].
Figure 2 for χ = 2 BDs with M1 = 2 and M2 = 4. In this
C. Simulation results
example, the number of inactive subcarriers between a pair
of active OFDM subcarriers needs to be at least twice the We evaluate the bit error rate (BER) at the RD with a
number of BDs. We note that this multiuser extension comes coherent receiver described in Section III-C, which estimates
at the expense of an increase in the frequency resources. and compensates for the frequency, phase, and channel im-
pairments before detecting the backscattered symbols. We use
IV. P ERFORMANCE EVALUATION Monte Carlo simulations with 105 runs to evaluate the perfor-
In this section, we investigate the link-level performance of mance and further assume that the time-of-arrival difference
the proposed modulation schemes. between CE and BD signals τ < TCP such that ncoh = K.
In Fig. 3, we plot the BER for BPSK and QPSK backscatter
A. Signal generation modulation for an AWGN channel under various values of the
We assume that the CE employs an NR OFDM waveform CIR. We observe that for a CIR as low as -50 dB, a reliable
with N = 256 subcarriers and ∆f = 15 kHz where there are BER of 10−2 can be achieved for a reader SNR of around
four inactive subcarriers between any two subsequent active -23 dB for BPSK and around -20 dB for QPSK. Moreover,
subcarriers. The CE draws the frequency domain data symbols the reader SNR required to achieve this performance is not
for the active subcarriers uniformly randomly from a QPSK sensitive to variations in the CIR. This is because the BD-
constellation. We adopt the NR frame structure such that there RD link performance is power limited rather than interference
are 14 OFDM symbols within a slot duration of 1 ms, where limited in this regime. With a further increase in interference
DMRS pilots are transmitted in every 7th OFDM symbol (e.g., CIR -60 dB), the orthogonality between the direct link
within a slot. This yields a transmission bandwidth of 3.84 and the backscattered signals is compromised, resulting in an
MHz and a data transmission rate of 1.2 Mbps at the CE. At unacceptably poor BER. We also observe that the symbol
the RD, we define the carrier to interference ratio (CIR) as the error rate (SER) performance for the QPSK data symbols
ratio of the received power of the backscattered signal to that transmitted by the CE node is orders of magnitude better than
of the direct link signal, and the signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) the backscatter link.
 10 0
comb-like subcarrier allocation and the backscatter tag applies
a specially designed binary sequence for impedance switching
BER (BD-RD link) or SER (CE-RD link)

10
-1 which translates the incident NR signal by a desired amount in
the frequency domain. To realize M-ary PSK, the switching
sequence is systematically rotated to generate the required
10 -2
BD-RD link BER (QPSK, CIR = -30 dB)
phase shifts. Finally, the switching sequence can be reused
CE-RD link SER (QPSK, CIR = -30 dB)
BD-RD link BER (QPSK, CIR = -50 dB)
across consecutive OFDM symbols to repeat a backscattered
10 -3 BD-RD link BER (QPSK, CIR = -60 dB)
BD-RD link BER (BPSK, CIR = -30 dB)
symbol which offers additional robustness. The proposed
CE-RD link SER (BPSK, CIR = -30 dB)
BD-RD link BER (BPSK, CIR = -50 dB)
design is scalable and can support multiuser scenarios as
BD-RD link BER (BPSK, CIR = -60 dB)
the amount of frequency and phase shifts can be controlled
10 -4
-30 -28 -26 -24 -22 -20 -18 by adjusting the design parameters. We have also evaluated
Reader SNR (dB)
the performance of the proposed NR backscatter system for
Fig. 3: BER versus the reader SNR for BPSK and QPSK BPSK and QPSK backscatter modulation using link-level
backscatter modulation for various values of the reader CIR simulations. The simulation results establish the viability of
assuming an AWGN channel with hardware impairments. the proposed non-ambient bistatic architecture in a cellular
system despite the presence of severe direct link interference.
0
10
There are several possible directions for future work. It will
be worthwhile to analyze the system-level capacity and eval-
10 -1 uate the performance with OFDMA in a multiuser scenario.
Another potential extension will be to conduct the performance
analysis of the proposed design with a non-coherent receiver.
BER

10 -2

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