1,587 research outputs found
Wirelessly Powered Backscatter Communication Networks: Modeling, Coverage and Capacity
Future Internet-of-Things (IoT) will connect billions of small computing
devices embedded in the environment and support their device-to-device (D2D)
communication. Powering this massive number of embedded devices is a key
challenge of designing IoT since batteries increase the devices' form factors
and battery recharging/replacement is difficult. To tackle this challenge, we
propose a novel network architecture that enables D2D communication between
passive nodes by integrating wireless power transfer and backscatter
communication, which is called a wirelessly powered backscatter communication
(WP-BackCom) network. In the network, standalone power beacons (PBs) are
deployed for wirelessly powering nodes by beaming unmodulated carrier signals
to targeted nodes. Provisioned with a backscatter antenna, a node transmits
data to an intended receiver by modulating and reflecting a fraction of a
carrier signal. Such transmission by backscatter consumes orders-of-magnitude
less power than a traditional radio. Thereby, the dense deployment of
low-complexity PBs with high transmission power can power a large-scale IoT. In
this paper, a WP-BackCom network is modeled as a random Poisson cluster process
in the horizontal plane where PBs are Poisson distributed and active ad-hoc
pairs of backscatter communication nodes with fixed separation distances form
random clusters centered at PBs. The backscatter nodes can harvest energy from
and backscatter carrier signals transmitted by PBs. Furthermore, the
transmission power of each node depends on the distance from the associated PB.
Applying stochastic geometry, the network coverage probability and transmission
capacity are derived and optimized as functions of backscatter parameters,
including backscatter duty cycle and reflection coefficient, as well as the PB
density. The effects of the parameters on network performance are
characterized.Comment: 28 pages, 11 figures, has been submitted to IEEE Trans. on Wireless
Communicatio
EC-CENTRIC: An Energy- and Context-Centric Perspective on IoT Systems and Protocol Design
The radio transceiver of an IoT device is often where most of the energy is consumed. For this reason, most research so far has focused on low power circuit and energy efficient physical layer designs, with the goal of reducing the average energy per information bit required for communication. While these efforts are valuable per se, their actual effectiveness can be partially neutralized by ill-designed network, processing and resource management solutions, which can become a primary factor of performance degradation, in terms of throughput, responsiveness and energy efficiency. The objective of this paper is to describe an energy-centric and context-aware optimization framework that accounts for the energy impact of the fundamental functionalities of an IoT system and that proceeds along three main technical thrusts: 1) balancing signal-dependent processing techniques (compression and feature extraction) and communication tasks; 2) jointly designing channel access and routing protocols to maximize the network lifetime; 3) providing self-adaptability to different operating conditions through the adoption of suitable learning architectures and of flexible/reconfigurable algorithms and protocols. After discussing this framework, we present some preliminary results that validate the effectiveness of our proposed line of action, and show how the use of adaptive signal processing and channel access techniques allows an IoT network to dynamically tune lifetime for signal distortion, according to the requirements dictated by the application
Throughput Maximization for UAV-Aided Backscatter Communication Networks
This paper investigates unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV)-aided backscatter communication (BackCom) networks, where the UAV is leveraged to help the backscatter device (BD) forward signals to the receiver. Based on the presence or absence of a direct link between BD and receiver, two protocols, namely transmit-backscatter (TB) protocol and transmit-backscatter-relay (TBR) protocol, are proposed to utilize the UAV to assist the BD. In particular, we formulate the system throughput maximization problems for the two protocols by jointly optimizing the time allocation, reflection coefficient and UAV trajectory. Different static/dynamic circuit power consumption models for the two protocols are analyzed. The resulting optimization problems are shown to be non-convex, which are challenging to solve. We first consider the dynamic circuit power consumption model, and decompose the original problems into three sub-problems, namely time allocation optimization with fixed UAV trajectory and reflection coefficient, reflection coefficient optimization with fixed UAV trajectory and time allocation, and UAV trajectory optimization with fixed reflection coefficient and time allocation. Then, an efficient iterative algorithm is proposed for both protocols by leveraging the block coordinate descent method and successive convex approximation (SCA) techniques. In addition, for the static circuit power consumption model, we obtain the optimal time allocation with a given reflection coefficient and UAV trajectory and the optimal reflection coefficient with low computational complexity by using the Lagrangian dual method. Simulation results show that the proposed protocols are able to achieve significant throughput gains over the compared benchmarks
A New Look at Physical Layer Security, Caching, and Wireless Energy Harvesting for Heterogeneous Ultra-dense Networks
Heterogeneous ultra-dense networks enable ultra-high data rates and ultra-low
latency through the use of dense sub-6 GHz and millimeter wave (mmWave) small
cells with different antenna configurations. Existing work has widely studied
spectral and energy efficiency in such networks and shown that high spectral
and energy efficiency can be achieved. This article investigates the benefits
of heterogeneous ultra-dense network architecture from the perspectives of
three promising technologies, i.e., physical layer security, caching, and
wireless energy harvesting, and provides enthusiastic outlook towards
application of these technologies in heterogeneous ultra-dense networks. Based
on the rationale of each technology, opportunities and challenges are
identified to advance the research in this emerging network.Comment: Accepted to appear in IEEE Communications Magazin
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