Reflection of Modulated Radio: System-Level Design, Analysis, and Performance Evaluation for Ambient Scatter Communication Systems

Ambient scatter communication systems have long been a novelty form of radio communications, with most reported ranges limited to several meters or less and very low data rates. This work presents, implements, and analyzes the ReMoRa ( Reflection of Modulated Radio) architecture for extending ambient scatter communication systems to long ranges and/or high data rates. ReMoRa comprises of a unique way to encode, down-convert, and detect signals scattered from mote to reader using ambient RF carriers that already contain information. Our ReMoRa implementation using GNURadio demonstrates read ranges of up to 20 meters between a low-powered sensor mote and an ambient reader that uses an existing FM radio signal at 91.1 MHz in Atlanta, GA with a data rate of 300.7 kbits/s, and demonstrate through simulation how these links can be extended to hundreds of meters.