Simulation and System Model for Designing and Evaluating Future Tag-to-Tag Architectures

The concept of ambient backscatter communication enables passive devices (or tags) to communicate using a nondedicated radio-frequency source present in their environment. This technique is highly attractive, since it requires no specific energy consumption or maintenance. Although experimentally demonstrated, its widespread adoption in commercial devices remains highly constrained by limited distances, low data rates and high sensitivity to complex propagation environments. This article presents a flexible, mixed modeling and simulation environment (with several modeling levels: electromagnetic, circuit, component, signal, system) that enables in-depth study of the performance of the radio link between two tags exploiting this principle. For the purposes of illustration, the backscattered signal is modelled by a two-level ASK (Amplitude Shift Keying) modulated signal, which is obtained by load modulation considering the electromagnetic coupling between the two tags. The performance of the radio link is evaluated through the BER (Bit Error Rate) as a function of the signal-to-noise ratio. Two types of receivers, coherent and non-coherent, are compared, and several communication scenarios are also considered. Simulation results are validated by the associated theoretical study.