Abstract
With the popularization of Internet-of-things (IoT) and wireless communication systems, a diverse set of applications in smart cities are emerging to improve the city-life. These applications usually require a large coverage area and minimal operation and maintenance cost. To this end, the recently emerging backscatter communication (BC) is gaining interest in both industry and academia as a new communication paradigm that provides high energy efficient communications that may even work in a battery-less mode and, thus, it is well suited for smart city applications. However, the coverage of BC in urban area deployments is not available, and the feasibility of its utilization for smart city applications is not known. In this article, we present a comprehensive coverage study of a practical cellular carrier-based BC system for indoor and outdoor scenarios in a downtown area of a Helsinki city. In particular, we evaluate the coverage outage performance of different low-power and wide area technologies, i.e., long range (LoRa) backscatter, arrow band-Internet of Things (NB-IoT), and Bluetooth low energy (BLE) based BC at different frequencies of operation. To do so, we carry out a comprehensive campaign of simulations while using a sophisticated three-dimensional (3D) ray tracing (RT) tool, ITU outdoor model, and 3rd generation partnership project (3GPP) indoor hotspot model. This study also covers the energy harvesting aspects of backscatter device, and it highlights the importance of future backscatter devices with high energy harvesting efficiency. The simulation results and discussion provided in this article will be helpful in understanding the coverage aspects of practical backscatter communication system in a smart city environment.
Highlights
The smart city is the integration of information and communication technology (ICT) into the classical city infrastructure in order to digitize the information and the processes that are involved in the management of a city [1]
We investigate the feasibility of backscatter communication (BC), which is driven by a carrier signal that is generated by available cellular system base stations, in terms of coverage that can be achieved
It is emphasized that energy harvesting time can be improved by developing backscatter device (BD) with better energy harvesting efficiency, and by integrating the components in the BDs which can harvest the energy from sources other than incoming radio frequency (RF) signal
Summary
The smart city is the integration of information and communication technology (ICT) into the classical city infrastructure in order to digitize the information and the processes that are involved in the management of a city [1]. Backscatter communication (BC) has recently emerged as an energy efficient ICT technology that provides optimized solutions to the requirements of smart city applications [3] This radio technology alters the RF signal, impinging it at the antenna without using power-hungry and expensive radio frequency (RF) electronics so that significant cost and power savings are obtained. The received signal power of the forward link i.e., between the transmitter (Tx) and the backscatter device (BD), in both indoor and outdoor condition is evaluated while utilizing an in-house built sophisticated 3D ray tracing simulator and a real city map data, at four different frequencies i.e., 200 MHz, 500 MHz, 700 MHz, and 900 MHz. The acquired simulation results shows that, for a considered case study, the mean received power levels at outdoor BDs are around –33 dBm, –42 dBm, –45.5 dBm, and –48 dBm at 200 MHz, 500 MHz, 700 MHz, and 900 MHz, respectively.
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