• Home
  • WiFi Backscatter
  • People
  • Publications
  • Links

WiFi Backscatter

Connecting RF-Powered Devices to the Internet


What is WiFi Backscatter?

RF-powered computers are small devices that compute and communicate using only the power that they harvest from RF signals. While existing technologies have harvested power from ambient RF sources (e.g., TV broadcasts), they require a dedicated gateway (like an RFID reader) for Internet connectivity. We present Wi-Fi Backscatter, a novel communication system that bridges RF-powered devices with the Internet. Specifically, we show that it is possible to reuse existing Wi-Fi infrastructure to provide Internet connectivity to RF-powered devices. To show Wi-Fi Backscatter’s feasibility, we build a hardware prototype and demonstrate the first communication link between an RF-powered device and commodity Wi-Fi devices. We use off-the-shelf Wi-Fi devices including Intel Wi-Fi cards, Linksys Routers, and our organization’s Wi-Fi infrastructure, and achieve communication rates of up to 1 kbps and ranges of up to 2.1 meters. We believe that this new capability can pave the way for the rapid deployment and adoption of RF-powered devices and achieve ubiquitous connectivity via nearby mobile devices that are Wi-Fi enabled.

People

Students

Bryce Kellogg
Aaron Parks

Faculty

Shyam Gollakota
Joshua R. Smith
David Wetherall

Contact: iotwifi@cs.washington.edu

Publications

Wi-Fi Backscatter: Internet Connectivity for RF-Powered Devices
Bryce Kellogg, Aaron Parks, Shyam Gollakota, Joshua R. Smith, David Wetherall
SIGCOMM, August 2014 [PDF]

Links

UW Networks and Wireless Lab
UW Sensor Systems Lab
Ambient Backscatter

© Bryce Kellogg, Computer Science & Engineering, University of Washington.
Powered by Bootstrap.