Beyond Backscatter: Rethinking Low-Power Wireless Communication to Tackle the Energy Challenge of Embedded Systems

Wireless communication remains the most energy-intensive component of embedded systems, often limiting their deployment in power-constrained or hard-to-reach environments. While backscatter communication offers energy efficiency by offloading carrier generation, it continues to face practical limitations, hindering widespread adoption. In this paper, we propose going beyond backscatter architecture that re-imagines both the transmitter and receiver using ultra-low-power components, such as tunnel diodes. Our approach eliminates the dependence on external emitters for transmission and moves beyond envelope detectors on the receiver side, resulting in significantly improved sensitivity and communication range.