Enabling Transiently-Powered Communication via Backscattering Energy State Information

Abstract

The growing interest in ultra-low-power wireless sensors powered directly by energy harvesters has revealed one of the major drawbacks of such battery-less devices, which is engaging communication between nodes, without wasting energy due to unavailable receivers. Backscatter communication enables low-power communication by eliminating energy-hungry hardware components and can communicate if IoT devices are ready to receive even at zero-energy onboard. In this paper, we present the design of a backscatter radio mechanism that is used as a feedback channel to transmit the energy state information almost for free. Simulation results demonstrate the effectiveness of our approach designed according to the novel approach of "transient computing".