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RF-transformer: a unified backscatter radio hardware abstraction

Authors:

Jiacheng Zhang,

Longfei ShangguanAuthors Info & Claims

MobiCom '22: Proceedings of the 28th Annual International Conference on Mobile Computing And Networking

Pages 446 - 458

https://doi.org/10.1145/3495243.3560549

Published: 14 October 2022 Publication History

Abstract

This paper presents RF-Transformer, a unified backscatter radio hardware abstraction that allows a low-power IoT device to directly communicate with heterogeneous wireless receivers at the minimum power consumption. Unlike existing backscatter systems that are tailored to a specific wireless communication protocol, RF-Transformer provides a programmable interface to the micro-controller, allowing IoT devices to synthesize different types of protocol-compliant backscatter signals sharing radically different PHY-layer designs. To show the efficacy of our design, we implement a PCB prototype of RF-Transformer on 2.4 GHz ISM band and showcase its capability on generating standard ZigBee, Bluetooth, LoRa, and Wi-Fi 802.11b/g/n/ac packets. Our extensive field studies show that RF-Transformer achieves 23.8 Mbps, 247.1 Kbps, 986.5 Kbps, and 27.3 Kbps throughput when generating standard Wi-Fi, ZigBee, Bluetooth, and LoRa signals while consuming 7.6--74.2X less power than their active counterparts. Our ASIC simulation based on the 65-nm CMOS process shows that the power gain of RF-Transformer can further grow to 92--678X. We further integrate RF-Transformer with pressure sensors and present a case study on detecting foot traffic density in hallways. Our 7-day case studies demonstrate RF-Transformer can reliably transmit sensor data to a commodity gateway by synthesizing LoRa packets on top of Wi-Fi signals. Our experimental results also verify the compatibility of RF-Transformer with commodity receivers. Code and hardware schematics can be found at: https://github.com/LeFsCC/RF-Transformer.

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Cited By

Dong HYang LYang LLuo Zli CZhang XWang W(2024)A Unified Tunnel-diode Based Low Power Signal Waveform Transform Hardware for RF ComputingProceedings of the First International Workshop on Radio Frequency (RF) Computing10.1145/3698386.3699993(36-37)Online publication date: 4-Nov-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3698386.3699993
Garg NGhosh ARoy NShu YLiu JTan RHe YChen J(2024)LiTEfoot: Ultra-low-power Localization using Ambient Cellular SignalsProceedings of the 22nd ACM Conference on Embedded Networked Sensor Systems10.1145/3666025.3699356(535-548)Online publication date: 4-Nov-2024
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Wang BZhu FLi WYang ZJin MTian XOkoshi TKo JLiKamWa R(2024)Frequency-agile OFDM BackscatterProceedings of the 22nd Annual International Conference on Mobile Systems, Applications and Services10.1145/3643832.3661873(252-264)Online publication date: 3-Jun-2024
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Index Terms

RF-transformer: a unified backscatter radio hardware abstraction
1. Computer systems organization
  1. Embedded and cyber-physical systems
2. Networks
  1. Network architectures

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Published In

cover image ACM Conferences

MobiCom '22: Proceedings of the 28th Annual International Conference on Mobile Computing And Networking

October 2022

932 pages

ISBN:9781450391818

DOI:10.1145/3495243

Copyright © 2022 Owner/Author.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution International 4.0 License.

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SIGMOBILE: ACM Special Interest Group on Mobility of Systems, Users, Data and Computing

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Association for Computing Machinery

New York, NY, United States

Publication History

Published: 14 October 2022

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Research-article

Funding Sources

National Science Fund of China
R&D Project of Key Core Technology and Generic Technology in Shanxi Province
China Postdoctoral Science Foundation
Key Program of China Postdoctoral Science Foundation
University of Pittsburgh

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ACM MobiCom '22

Sponsor:

SIGMOBILE

ACM MobiCom '22: The 28th Annual International Conference on Mobile Computing and Networking

October 17 - 21, 2022

NSW, Sydney, Australia

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Overall Acceptance Rate 440 of 2,972 submissions, 15%

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Cited By

Dong HYang LYang LLuo Zli CZhang XWang W(2024)A Unified Tunnel-diode Based Low Power Signal Waveform Transform Hardware for RF ComputingProceedings of the First International Workshop on Radio Frequency (RF) Computing10.1145/3698386.3699993(36-37)Online publication date: 4-Nov-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3698386.3699993
Garg NGhosh ARoy NShu YLiu JTan RHe YChen J(2024)LiTEfoot: Ultra-low-power Localization using Ambient Cellular SignalsProceedings of the 22nd ACM Conference on Embedded Networked Sensor Systems10.1145/3666025.3699356(535-548)Online publication date: 4-Nov-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3666025.3699356
Wang BZhu FLi WYang ZJin MTian XOkoshi TKo JLiKamWa R(2024)Frequency-agile OFDM BackscatterProceedings of the 22nd Annual International Conference on Mobile Systems, Applications and Services10.1145/3643832.3661873(252-264)Online publication date: 3-Jun-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3643832.3661873
Qin QChen KXie YLuo HFang DChen XGanesan DLane NShi W(2024)Pushing the Throughput Limit of OFDM-based Wi-Fi Backscatter CommunicationProceedings of the 30th Annual International Conference on Mobile Computing and Networking10.1145/3636534.3690672(968-983)Online publication date: 4-Dec-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3636534.3690672
Nagaraj SSarkar M(2024)Inter-Carrier Interference Reduction Technique for Backscattered OFDMIEEE Transactions on Vehicular Technology10.1109/TVT.2024.3381868(1-5)Online publication date: 2024
https://doi.org/10.1109/TVT.2024.3381868
Guo XHe YNan JZhang JLiu YShangguan L(2024)A Low-Power Demodulator for LoRa Backscatter Systems With Frequency-Amplitude TransformationIEEE/ACM Transactions on Networking10.1109/TNET.2024.339650932:4(3515-3527)Online publication date: Aug-2024
https://doi.org/10.1109/TNET.2024.3396509
Wang BZhu FZhong LJin MWang XChen CGuan XZhou CTian X(2024)Enabling Dual-Band Wi-Fi BackscatterIEEE Transactions on Mobile Computing10.1109/TMC.2024.340001323:12(11750-11764)Online publication date: Dec-2024
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Huang ZDing YWu DWang SGong W(2024)Bitalign: Bit Alignment for Bluetooth Backscatter CommunicationIEEE Transactions on Mobile Computing10.1109/TMC.2024.337481523:10(10191-10201)Online publication date: Oct-2024
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Zou YNa XGuo XSun YHe Y(2024)Trident: Interference Avoidance in Multi-reader Backscatter Network via Frequency-space DivisionIEEE INFOCOM 2024 - IEEE Conference on Computer Communications10.1109/INFOCOM52122.2024.10621258(1761-1770)Online publication date: 20-May-2024
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Guo XHe YLiu YShangguan L(2023)A New Design Paradigm for Polymorphic Backscatter RadiosGetMobile: Mobile Computing and Communications10.1145/3631588.363159427:3(18-22)Online publication date: 1-Nov-2023
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