Beamforming Design in Multiple-Input-Multiple-Output Symbiotic Radio Backscatter Systems

Abstract

Symbiotic radio (SR) backscatter is a possible low-power wireless communication technique for future Internet of Things devices. In this letter, a multiple-input-multiple-output (MIMO) SR backscatter system is proposed, where the secondary multi-antenna transmission from the backscatter device (BD) to the receiver is riding on the primary multi-antenna transmission from the transmitter to the receiver. We investigate the beamforming design optimization problem which maximizes the sum capacity of primary and secondary transmissions under the capacity constraint of secondary transmission. In the MIMO SR backscatter system, each antenna of the SR BD reflects its received ambient radio frequency signals from all the transmitting antennas of the transmitter, which causes that the globally optimal solution is difficult to obtain. Here, we derive an algorithm to obtain the capacity upper bound. Furthermore, considering both primary and secondary transmissions, we propose an exact penalty method based locally optimal solution. Simulation results display that the proposed exact penalty method based locally optimal solution achieves the sum capacity which is close to the upper bound.