Communication MAC Protocol for Coexisting Wireless Devices and Backscatter Tags

Conventional Wi-Fi devices, Radio Frequency (RF) energy harvesting devices, and smart sensor devices could coexist in a network. Backscatter communication paves a way to provide battery-free communications for the IoT network. A network can be more susceptible to collision by RF transmissions and backscatter communications in a dense energy harvesting network. In this paper, we propose an Opportunistic Backscatter Communication Medium access control (OBM) in an energy harvesting IoT network. It gives tags opportunities to exploit the wireless power transmitted by the Hybrid Access Point (HAP) to communicate with the reader. The reader excites the tags for contention when it finds the RF energy signal of the HAP. The backscatter tags opportunistically utilize it for contention and communicate with the reader. The wireless devices and the backscatter tags use contention mechanisms for mitigating collisions and accessing the channel. The proposed OBM protocol shows performance improvement over the conventional schemes.