Backscatter Radio at Gigabit Speeds
Backscatter radios encode data in reflected signals to offer wireless communications that consume as little energy as possible—but they can be limited by poor data rates. Now scientists at Nokia Bell Labs and their colleagues have developed backscatter radios capable of gigabit speeds, for potential use in the emerging Internet of Things and other devices, a new study finds.
[...] [The] low frequencies that backscatter radios often employ and the strategies they use to encode data in reflected signals typically limit their data rates. For example, radio-frequency identification (RFID) tags, which often employ backscatter radios at sub-gigahertz frequencies, transmit data at only kilobits per second rates. At the 2.4 gigahertz frequency often used by WiFi and Bluetooth, backscatter is generally limited to hundreds of megabits per second.
Now scientists have developed a backscatter radio operating at millimeter-wave frequencies of 24 to 28 gigahertz, the kind used in upcoming 5G cell phones. The new device is capable of data rates of 2 gigabits per second over distances of 0.5 meters, consuming just 0.17 picojoules per bit. This means it requires thousands of times less power than standard radios—whereas commonly used millimeter-wave radio components consume 600 to 700 milliwatts of power, the new device uses roughly 0.5 milliwatts.
The new device consists of an antenna array and a single high-frequency transistor. The transistor can apply a voltage or not to make the antenna respectively either receive or reflect incoming signals.
Journal Reference:
John Kimionis, Apostolos Georgiadis, Spyridon Nektarios Daskalakis, et al. A printed millimetre-wave modulator and antenna array for backscatter communications at gigabit data rates [open], Nature Electronics (DOI: 10.1038/s41928-021-00588-8)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 19 2021, @04:16AM (1 child)
》 The new device is capable of data rates of 2 gigabits per second over distances of 0.5 meters
That's about a foot and a half in non-commie units. Just how many 5g towers do they plan to build?
(Score: 2, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 19 2021, @04:41AM
Not that many, but they can use the chip in the covid vaccine as a relay.
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 19 2021, @04:28AM
You outta see my "backscatter" the morning after a night of tequila and chicken wings.
Thank the lord/buddha/vishinu for clorox toilet cleaner. Get the cling version.
(Score: 1, Offtopic) by Anti-aristarchus on Saturday June 19 2021, @07:58AM (1 child)
Speaking of backscatter, seems our home=wreaking 15-year old has deleted his journal? We should all be so lucky.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 19 2021, @02:19PM
No it's still there. I think his karma just dropped low enough to kick him off the front page.
https://soylentnews.org/comments.pl?sid=43456 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 3, Interesting) by pipedwho on Sunday June 20 2021, @01:33AM
Back in the ‘90s prior to 802.11, I worked on a wireless networking system that used backscatter for the uplink. Carrier was a spread spectrum modulated 2.5GHz source. Downlink was 1mbit and uplink was the same. With today’s tech, it would be reasonable to assume we could hit Gbit/s speeds using and more complex uplink modulation.
At ranges of less than 1m we could power off the downlink. Beyond that range (up to 20m) we rand
off about 10mW to power the circuitry.
Our uplink was an FM remodulated downlink. But we were considering higher orders of FFT based modulation at the time to reduce bandwidth and increase the number of uplink channels.