Wireless-Powered Device-to-Device Communications With Ambient Backscattering: Performance Modeling and Analysis

Date

12/8/2017

Journal Title

Journal ISSN

Volume Title

Publisher

IEEE Transactions on Wireless Communications

Abstract

The recent advanced wireless energy harvesting technology has enabled wireless-powered communications to accommodate wireless data services in a self-sustainable manner. However, wireless-powered communications rely on active RF signals to communicate and result in high power consumption. On the other hand, ambient backscatter technology that passively reflects existing RF signal sources in the air to communicate has the potential to facilitate an implementation with ultra-low power consumption. In this paper, we introduce a hybrid device-to-device (D2D) communication paradigm by integrating ambient backscattering with wireless-powered communications. The hybrid D2D communications are self-sustainable, as no dedicated external power supply is required. However, since the radio signals for energy harvesting and for backscattering come from the ambient, the performance of the hybrid D2D communications depends largely on environment factors, e.g., distribution, spatial density, and transmission load of ambient energy sources. Therefore, we design two mode selection protocols for the hybrid D2D transmitter, allowing a more flexible adaptation to the environment. We then introduce analytical models to characterize the impacts of the considered environment factors on the hybrid D2D communication performance. Together with extensive simulations, our analysis shows that the communication performance benefits from larger repulsion, transmission load, and density of ambient energy sources. Furthermore, we investigate how different mode selection mechanisms affect the communication performance.

Description

Keywords

Ambient backscatter, D2D communications, modulated backscatter, repulsion behavior, wireless-powered communications

Citation

Copyright 2017 IEEE Transactions on Wireless Communications.This is a pre-print version of apublisher paper that is available at: https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/abstract/document/8170328. Recommended citation: Lu, Xiao, Hai Jiang, Dusit Niyato, Dong In Kim, and Zhu Han. "Wireless-powered device-to-device communications with ambient backscattering: Performance modeling and analysis." IEEE Transactions on Wireless Communications 17, no. 3 (2017): 1528-1544. DOI: 10.1109/TWC.2017.2779857. This item has been deposited in accordance with publisher copyright and licensing terms and with the author's permission.