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Inter-Technology Backscatter: Towards Internet Connectivity for Implanted Devices

Authors:

Shyamnath Gollakota,

Joshua SmithAuthors Info & Claims

SIGCOMM '16: Proceedings of the 2016 ACM SIGCOMM Conference

Pages 356 - 369

https://doi.org/10.1145/2934872.2934894

Published: 22 August 2016 Publication History

Abstract

We introduce inter-technology backscatter, a novel approach that transforms wireless transmissions from one technology to another, on the air. Specifically, we show for the first time that Bluetooth transmissions can be used to create Wi-Fi and ZigBee-compatible signals using backscatter communication. Since Bluetooth, Wi-Fi and ZigBee radios are widely available, this approach enables a backscatter design that works using only commodity devices.

We build prototype backscatter hardware using an FPGA and experiment with various Wi-Fi, Bluetooth and ZigBee devices. Our experiments show we can create 2--11~Mbps Wi-Fi standards-compliant signals by backscattering Bluetooth transmissions. To show the generality of our approach, we also demonstrate generation of standards-complaint ZigBee signals by backscattering Bluetooth transmissions. Finally, we build proof-of-concepts for previously infeasible applications including the first contact lens form-factor antenna prototype and an implantable neural recording interface that communicate directly with commodity devices such as smartphones and watches, thus enabling the vision of Internet connected implanted devices.

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Liu XDong WYan BHe XPeng LChen XChen DWang W(2025)Harmonic Interference Resilient Backscatter Communication with Adaptive Pulse-Width Frequency ShiftingElectronics10.3390/electronics1405094614:5(946)Online publication date: 27-Feb-2025
https://doi.org/10.3390/electronics14050946
Wu WGong W(2025)Concurrent WiFi backscatter communication using a single receiver in IoT networksComputer Networks10.1016/j.comnet.2024.111029(111029)Online publication date: Jan-2025
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.comnet.2024.111029
Li XXu HAn YFeng X(2024)A 0.59 nW/kHz Clock Circuit with High-Precision Clock Calibration for Passive Internet of Things ChipsElectronics10.3390/electronics1306109413:6(1094)Online publication date: 16-Mar-2024
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Index Terms

Inter-Technology Backscatter: Towards Internet Connectivity for Implanted Devices
1. Applied computing
  1. Life and medical sciences
    1. Consumer health
2. Networks
  1. Network types
    1. Cyber-physical networks

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Information & Contributors

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Published In

cover image ACM Conferences

SIGCOMM '16: Proceedings of the 2016 ACM SIGCOMM Conference

August 2016

645 pages

ISBN:9781450341936

DOI:10.1145/2934872

General Chairs:
Marinho Barcellos
UFRGS
,
Jon Crowcroft
University of Cambridge
,
Program Chairs:
Amin Vahdat
Google
,
Sachin Katti
Stanford University

Copyright © 2016 ACM.

Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected]

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SIGCOMM: ACM Special Interest Group on Data Communication

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Association for Computing Machinery

New York, NY, United States

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Published: 22 August 2016

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SIGCOMM '16

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SIGCOMM '16: ACM SIGCOMM 2016 Conference

August 22 - 26, 2016

Florianopolis, Brazil

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SIGCOMM '16 Paper Acceptance Rate 39 of 231 submissions, 17%;

Overall Acceptance Rate 462 of 3,389 submissions, 14%

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Cited By

Liu XDong WYan BHe XPeng LChen XChen DWang W(2025)Harmonic Interference Resilient Backscatter Communication with Adaptive Pulse-Width Frequency ShiftingElectronics10.3390/electronics1405094614:5(946)Online publication date: 27-Feb-2025
https://doi.org/10.3390/electronics14050946
Wu WGong W(2025)Concurrent WiFi backscatter communication using a single receiver in IoT networksComputer Networks10.1016/j.comnet.2024.111029(111029)Online publication date: Jan-2025
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.comnet.2024.111029
Li XXu HAn YFeng X(2024)A 0.59 nW/kHz Clock Circuit with High-Precision Clock Calibration for Passive Internet of Things ChipsElectronics10.3390/electronics1306109413:6(1094)Online publication date: 16-Mar-2024
https://doi.org/10.3390/electronics13061094
Li XYuan YAn YJiang B(2024)A BLE 5.0 Extended Advertising Backscatter with Commodity Devices in Passive IoT ScenariosElectronics10.3390/electronics1305096113:5(961)Online publication date: 1-Mar-2024
https://doi.org/10.3390/electronics13050961
Padmal MPiumwardane DRohner CVoigt T(2024)Channel Estimation for Analog Backscatter TagsProceedings of the First International Workshop on Radio Frequency (RF) Computing10.1145/3698386.3699989(1-7)Online publication date: 4-Nov-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3698386.3699989
Meng QWang HZhang CSong YLi SLu LZhu HShu YLiu JTan RHe YChen J(2024)Processor-Sharing Internet of Things Architecture for Large-scale DeploymentProceedings of the 22nd ACM Conference on Embedded Networked Sensor Systems10.1145/3666025.3699333(211-224)Online publication date: 4-Nov-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3666025.3699333
Jiang JWang JChen YTong SXie PLiu YLiu YOkoshi TKo JLiKamWa R(2024)Willow: Practical WiFi Backscatter Localization with Parallel TagsProceedings of the 22nd Annual International Conference on Mobile Systems, Applications and Services10.1145/3643832.3661853(265-277)Online publication date: 3-Jun-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3643832.3661853
Liang ZXing GXu CDavies N(2024)SRIS: Self-powered Reconfigurable Intelligent SurfacesProceedings of the 25th International Workshop on Mobile Computing Systems and Applications10.1145/3638550.3641124(66-72)Online publication date: 28-Feb-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3638550.3641124
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
Liao JWang XKoskinen KZhang TRuttik KJäntti RPhan-Huy D(2024)Indoor Backscattering Communication by Using Commercial LTE Pilots2024 IEEE 99th Vehicular Technology Conference (VTC2024-Spring)10.1109/VTC2024-Spring62846.2024.10683260(1-5)Online publication date: 24-Jun-2024
https://doi.org/10.1109/VTC2024-Spring62846.2024.10683260
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