Carlos M. Pérez-Penichet

LoRea: A Backscatter Architecture that Achieves a Long Communication Range

There is the long-standing assumption that radio communication in the range of hundreds of meters needs to consume mWs of power at the transmitting device. In this paper, we demonstrate that this is not necessarily the case for some devices equipped with backscatter radios. We present LOREA an architecture consisting of a tag, a reader and multiple carrier generators that overcomes the power, cost and range limitations of existing systems such as Computational Radio Frequency Identification (CRFID). LOREA achieves this by: First, generating narrow-band backscatter transmissions that improve receiver sensitivity. Second, mitigating self-interference without the complex designs employed on RFID readers by keeping carrier signal and backscattered signal apart in frequency. Finally, decoupling carrier generation from the reader and using devices such as WiFi routers and sensor nodes as a source of the carrier signal. An off-the-shelf implementation of LOREA costs 70 USD, a drastic reduction in price considering commercial RFID readers cost 2000 USD. LOREAs range scales with the carrier strength, and proximity to the carrier source and achieves a maximum range of 3.4 km when the tag is located at 1 m distance from a 28 dBm carrier source while consuming 70 μW at the tag. When the tag is equidistant from the carrier source and the receiver, we can communicate upto 75 m, a significant improvement over existing RFID readers.

Augmenting IoT networks with backscatter-enabled passive sensor tags

The sensing modalities available in an Internet-of-Things (IoT) network are usually fixed before deployment, when the operator selects a suitable IoT platform. Retrofitting a deployment with additional sensors can be cumbersome, because it requires either modifying the deployed hardware or adding new devices that then have to be maintained. In this paper, we present our vision and work towards passive sensor tags: battery-free devices that allow to augment existing IoT deployments with additional sensing capabilities without the need to modify the existing deployment. Our passive sensor tags use backscatter transmissions to communicate with the deployed network. Crucially, they do this in a way that is compatible with the deployed networks radio protocol, and without the need for additional infrastructure. We present an FPGA-based prototype of a passive sensor tag that can communicate with unmodified 802.15.4 IoT devices. Our initial experiments with the prototype support the feasibility of our approach. We also lay out the next steps towards fully realizing the vision of passive sensor tags.

Poster Abstract: LocaLight - A Battery-Free Passive Localization System Using Visible Light

Most existing indoor localization systems are battery-powered and use the changes in Radio Frequency (RF) signals to localize objects. In this paper, we present LocaLight: a battery-free indoor localization system that localizes objects using visible light by tracking the shadow they cast. By sensing a drop in the intensity of ambient light caused by the presence of a shadow, LocaLight localizes the object. Since the position of the shadow can be predicted, it is possible to localize the object in a sensitive area by carefully positioning the light sensors and the overhead lights. Our initial results suggest that LocaLight achieves an accuracy comparable to many of the state-of-the art solutions that use RF.

Ph.D. Forum Abstract: Ambient Backscatter Communication

Ambient backscatter communication, where energy and wireless carrier are extracted from existing radio signals, are very attractive to the Internet of Things. This technology is emerging as an enabler for battery-less sensor nodes that can operate unattended for extended periods of time. Their capacity to operate without maintenance make them attractive for operation in situations where nodes might not be easily accessible. My research will help turn this vision into reality by advancing key areas that remain unexplored in this field.

Passive sensor tags: demo

The sensing capabilities of an Internet-of-Things (IoT) network are usually fixed at deployment. Adding new sensing modalities is a cumbersome process because it requires altering the deployed hardware. We introduce passive sensor tags that allow to easily and seamlessly add new sensors to existing IoT deployments without requiring hardware modifications or additional energy sources. Passive sensor tags employ backscatter communication to generate transmissions that can be decoded by the radio transceivers present in todays IoT devices. Furthermore, unlike recent works, our approach does not require dedicated infrastructure to generate the unmodulated carrier used for backscatter communication. The demo showcases our prototype of a passive sensor tag collecting sensor data and delivering it to unmodified commodity IoT devices using passive 802.15.4 transmissions.

Battery-free 802.15.4 receiver

We present the architecture of an 802.15.4 receiver that, for the first time, operates at a few hundred microwatts, enabling new battery-free applications. To reach the required micro-power consumption, the architecture diverges from that of commodity receivers in two important ways. First, it offloads the power-hungry local oscillator to an external device, much like backscatter transmitters do. Second, we avoid the energy cost of demodulating a phase-modulated signal by treating 802.15.4 as a frequency-modulated one, which allows us to receive with a simple passive detector and an energy-efficient thresholding circuit. We describe a prototype that can receive 802.15.4 frames with a power consumption of 361 μW. Our receiver prototype achieves sufficient communication range to integrate with deployed wireless sensor networks (WSNs).We illustrate this integration by pairing the prototype with an 802.15.4 backscatter transmitter and integrating it with unmodified 802.15.4 sensor nodes running the TSCH and Glossy protocols.

Battery-free 802.15.4 receiver: demo abstract

We present the architecture for an 802.15.4 receiver that enables battery-free operation. To reach micro-power consumption, the architecture diverges from that of commodity receivers in the following ways: First, similar to backscatter transmitters, it offloads the power-hungry local oscillator to an external device. Second, we avoid the energy cost of demodulating a phase-modulated signal by treating 802.15.4 as a frequency-modulated one, allowing us to receive with a simple passive detector and an energy-efficient thresholding circuit. We demonstrate an off-the-shelf prototype of our receiver receives 802.15.4 from a distance of 470 cm with the carrier generator 30 cm away. This range is sufficient to integrate with deployed wireless sensor networks (WSNs). We demonstrate this integration by pairing our receiver with a 802.15.4 backscatter transmitter and integrating it with unmodified commodity sensor nodes running the TSCH protocol.

On limits of constructive interference in backscatter systems

Backscatter communication reduces the energy consumption of resource-constrained sensors and actuators by several orders of magnitude as it avoids the resource-consuming need to generate a radio wave. Many backscatter systems and applications suffer from low communication range. By exploiting the collective power of several tags that transmit the same data simultaneously, constructive interference may help to remedy this problem and increase the communication range. When several tags backscatter the same signal simultaneously it is not necessarily true that constructive interference occurs. As our theoretical results and previous work indicate the interference might also be destructive. Our experimental results on real hardware suggest that exploiting constructive interference to increase the communication range requires careful coordination which is difficult in decentralized settings.

Augmenting WSNs with Interoperable 802.15.4 Sensor Tags

The sensing capabilities of most sensor networks are fixed at the time of deployment. Adding new sensing capabilities to such networks is a costly and cumbersome process. We present Passive Sensor Tags, battery-free sensing devices that could be used to extend the sensing capabilities of an existing network. Sensor tags feature our new 802.15.4 receiver design which is suitable for micro-power operation, making battery-free tags possible. Because our tags can both transmit and receive 802.15.4 frames there is no need for any modification to the deployed hardware. We present preliminary measurements of transmission and reception range.

UrbanSense: An urban-scale sensing platform for the Internet of Things

A critical step towards smarter and safer cities is to endow them with the abilities to massively gather a wide variety of data sets and to automatically feed those data to decision support tools and applications that leverage artificial intelligence. We present UrbanSense, a platform deployed on the streets of a mid-size European city (Porto, Portugal) to collect key environmental data. The main innovations of UrbanSense are (1) design for affordability and extensibility, (2) its ability to leverage heterogeneous networks to send the data to the cloud (using both real-time and delay-tolerant communications), and (3) its Internet of Things integration to expose the data streams to smart city tools and applications. Beyond discussing the design choices, we present operational results for 6 months of operation and give a detailed account of the challenges faced by the successful deployment of urban sensing technologies in the wild.