Reflection of Modulated Radio: System-Level Design, Analysis, and Performance Evaluation for Ambient Scatter Communication Systems

Abstract

Ambient scatter communication systems have long been a novelty form of radio communications, with most reported ranges limited to several meters or less and very low data rates. This work presents, implements, and analyzes the ReMoRa (Reflection of Modulated Radio) architecture for extending ambient scatter communication systems to long ranges and/or high data rates. ReMoRa comprises of a unique way to encode, down-convert, and detect signals scattered from mote to reader using ambient RF carriers that already contain information. Our ReMoRa implementation using GNURadio demonstrates read ranges of up to 20 meters between a low-powered sensor mote and an ambient reader that uses an existing FM radio signal at 91.1 MHz in Atlanta, GA with a data rate of 300.7 kbits/s, and demonstrate through simulation how these links can be extended to hundreds of meters.