Over the past few years, researchers have explored the
concept of Wi-Fi backscatter [25, 38] that creates an additional
narrowband data stream to ride on top of existing
Wi-Fi signals. While promising, existing designs either
achieve very low data rates (100s of bps) at close by distances
(2-4 feet) [25] or use custom full-duplex hardware
that cannot be used with any existingWi-Fi devices [38].
In this paper, we take a different approach — instead
of backscattering existing Wi-Fi signals to send an additional
data stream, we use backscatter communication
to directly generate Wi-Fi transmissions that can be decoded
on any of the billions of existing devices with a
Figure 1: Passive Wi-Fi architecture. The passive Wi-
Fi devices perform digital baseband operations like coding,
while the power-consuming RF functions are delegated
to a plugged-in device in the network.
Wi-Fi chipset. To this end, we introduce Passive Wi-Fi
that demonstrates for the first time that one can generate
802.11b transmissions using backscatter communication,
while consuming 4–5 orders of magnitude lower
power than existing Wi-Fi chipsets.
We observe that while CMOS technology scaling has
conventionally provided exponential benefits for the size
and power consumption of digital logic systems, analog
RF components, that are necessary for Wi-Fi communication,
have not seen a similar power scaling. As a result,
Wi-Fi transmissions on sensors and mobile devices still
consume hundreds of milliwatts of power [31–33]. To
get around this problem, passive Wi-Fi uses backscatter
to decouple the baseband Wi-Fi digital logic from the
power-consuming RF components, as shown in Fig. 1.
In our architecture, the passive Wi-Fi devices perform
digital baseband operations like coding and modulation,
while the power-consuming RF components such as frequency
synthesizers and power amplifiers are delegated
to a single plugged-in device in the network. This device
provides the RF functions for all the passive Wi-Fi
devices in the vicinity by transmitting a single-frequency
tone. The passive Wi-Fi devices create 802.11b transmissions
by reflecting or absorbing this tone using a digital
switch running at baseband. Since the passive Wi-Fi
1
devices have no analog components, they consumes less
silicon area and would be smaller and cheaper than existing
Wi-Fi chipsets. More importantly, their power consumption
would be orders of magnitude lower since they
only perform digital baseband operations. To realize this,
however, we need to address three main challenges.
(a) How can Wi-Fi receivers decode in the presence
of interference from the plugged-in device? The Wi-Fi
receiver receives the backscattered signal in the presence
of a strong interference from the tone transmitted
by the plugged-in device. Traditional backscatter systems
[34, 38] use a full-duplex radio to cancel this strong
interfering signal, which is not possible on existing Wi-
Fi devices. Our key observation is that Wi-Fi receivers
are required to work even in the presence of interference
in the adjacent band that is 35 dB stronger [12]. Further,
as Wi-Fi and Bluetooth radios are being integrated onto
a single chipset [6], Wi-Fi hardware is being designed
to work in the presence of out-of-band Bluetooth interference.
Thus, we set the plugged-in device to transmit
its tone at a frequency that lies outside the desired Wi-
Fi channel; this ensures that existing Wi-Fi chipsets can
suppress the resulting out-of-band interference.
(b) How can we create 802.11b transmissions using
backscatter? At a high level, we first shift the out-ofband
tone from the plugged-in device to lie at the center
of the desired Wi-Fi channel. We then use this shifted
tone to create 802.11b transmissions. Intuitively, multiplying
two sinusoidal signals can create a frequency
shift.1 Thus, by backscattering at a frequency Df , we
can shift the tone. To synthesizeWi-Fi transmissions, we
leverage that 802.11b uses DSSS and CCK encoding on
top of DBPSK and DQPSK modulation. The encoding
operation is digital in nature and hence is achieved using
digital logic. To create the phase changes required for
DBPSK and DQPSK, we approximate a digital square
wave as a sinusoid and modulate its phase by changing
the timing of the square wave (see §2.3). Thus, passive
Wi-Fi devices can fully operate in the digital domain at
baseband and yet synthesize 802.11b transmissions.
(c) How do passive Wi-Fi devices share the Wi-Fi network?
TraditionalWi-Fi shares the network using carrier
sense. However, this requires aWi-Fi receiver that is ON
before every transmission. Since Wi-Fi receivers require
power-consuming RF components such as ADCs and
frequency synthesizers, this would eliminate the power
savings from our design. Instead, we delegate the powerconsuming
task of carrier sense to the plugged-in device.
At a high level, the plugged-in device performs carri