Inter-Technology Backscatter: Towards Internet Connectivity for Implanted Devices

By Vikram Iyer, Vamsi Talla, Bryce Kellogg, Shyamnath Gollakota, Joshua R. Smith. GETMBL, 2016

376 citations recorded by the source corpus.

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.

Subfields: Computer Networks and Communications, Electrical and Electronic Engineering

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/bf1d2490cf4413ad20f773af232e306c25ddf29e

How researchers see this paper

The researchers whose trusted networks rank it highest, strongest advocate first. Every researcher gets a different order.

In Computer Networks and Communications

In Electrical and Electronic Engineering

Citations in the corpus

Modulation in the Air: Backscatter Communication Over Ambient OFDM Carrier (2017, methodology): “An inter-technology backscatter (interscatter) system is proposed in [15], which transforms wireless transmissions from one technology (e.”
Symbiotic Radio: A New Communication Paradigm for Passive Internet of Things (2018, background): “To tackle the DLI problem, one way is to design the BD such that the backscattered signal is shifted to a nonoverlapping spectrum with the ambient transmission [12]–[17].”
Cooperative Ambient Backscatter Communications for Green Internet-of-Things (2018, background): “An inter-technology backscatter system is proposed in [15], which transforms wireless transmissions from one technology (e.”
PLoRa: a passive long-range data network from ambient LoRa transmissions (2018, background): “Interscatter [16] backscatters Wi-Fi signals from a Bluetooth excitation signal, but works overWi-Fi ranges (80 ft.”
Ambient Backscatter Communications: A Contemporary Survey (2017, background): “These modulation schemes are commonly adopted in backscatter communications systems [47], [62], [63], [66], [74], [78].”
HitchHike: Practical Backscatter Using Commodity WiFi (2016, methodology): “Both Hitch-Hike and Inter-Technology Backscatter [14] describe a single sideband frequency shifting technique that ensures that only the desired backscatter sideband is produced and other spurious sidebands are eliminated.”
Ambient Backscatter Communication Systems: Detection and Performance Analysis (2016, background): “It was shown recently that Bluetooth transmissions can be leveraged to create Wi-Fi and ZigBee-compatible signals utilizing backscatter communication [17].”