Polarization-Based Reconfigurable Tags for Robust Ambient Backscatter Communications

Ambient backscatter communication is an emerging and promising low-energy technology for the Internet of Things. In such a system, a tag sends a binary message to a reader by backscattering a radio frequency signal generated by an ambient source. The tag can operate without battery and without generating additional radio waves. However, the tag-to-reader link suffers from the source-to-reader interference. In this paper, we propose a polarization-based reconfigurable antenna in order to improve the robustness of the tag-to-reader link against the source-to-reader direct interference. More precisely, we compare different types of tags' antennas, different tags' encoding schemes, and different detectors at the reader. By using analysis, numerical simulations, and experiments, we show that a polarization-based reconfigurable tag with four polarization directions significantly outperforms a non-reconfigurable tag, and provides almost the same performance as an ideal reconfigurable tag with a large number of reconfigurable polarization patterns.