Outage Analysis of Hybrid Backscatter Communication Systems With Opportunistic SIC

Abstract

This letter introduces a hybrid transmission mode (HTM) for ambient backscatter communication. The HTM considers the receiver’s direct link signal decoding capability and the tag circuit’s sensitivity. It utilizes opportunistic successive interference cancellation (SIC) and ensures continuous reflection while minimizing active power consumption. The tag adaptively reflects a portion of the radio frequency (RF) source signal via passive transmission (PT), except when insufficient harvested energy requires the tag to rely on battery power, reflecting the entire RF source signal. Tight closed-form approximations for outage probabilities, derived using Gaussian-Chebyshev quadrature, are presented. The outage performance of traditional PT, operating with fixed and variable reflection coefficients, is also analyzed for comparison. Simulation results confirm the accuracy and precision of the derivations and demonstrate the superior performance of the proposed HTM compared to traditional PT.