Symbiotic backscatter communications for 6G: principles, approaches, and applications

Abstract

In recent years, due to the mutualistic sharing of spectrum and energy, symbiotic backscatter communications have attracted considerable attention and provided a potential solution to the spectrum and energy issues in 6G. In symbiotic backscatter communications, the secondary system uses the spectrum and radio frequency signal of the primary system for passive backscatter transmission. Meanwhile, the secondary transmission provides additional multipath to the primary system, which is expected to improve the performance of the primary system. First, the basic concepts and technical principles of symbiotic backscatter communications are introduced. Second, an overview of symbiotic backscatter communications is provided from the aspects of information theory, receiver design, resource allocation, and multiuser access. Third, the applications of the reconfigurable intelligent surface (RIS) in symbiotic backscatter communications are described, and the benefits brought by the introduction of RIS for symbiotic backscatter communications are analyzed and summarized. Finally, the 6G architecture and the application prospects of integrating the symbiotic backscatter communication are illustrated, and the challenges of the symbiotic backscatter communications are discussed.