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Improved Energy-Based Signal Detection for Ambient Backscatter Communications

S. Zargari, C. Tellambura, A. Maaref

TL;DR

The paper tackles AmBC signal detection under unknown CSI and ambient-source parameters, where TED fails to perform reliably. It introduces two non-coherent detectors, JCED (joint correlation-energy detector) and IED (p-norm energy detector), and analyzes their performance under a generalized McLeish noise model, deriving an analytical AUC for ROC. Results on both single- and multi-antenna readers show substantial performance gains over TED, with JCED offering the largest improvements, especially when direct interference cancellation (DIC) is employed and with antenna diversity. The work provides closed-form detector statistics, noise-robust AUC expressions, and comprehensive simulations, highlighting practical gains for AmBC in noisy, uncertain environments and guiding future non-linear and MIMO extensions.

Abstract

In ambient backscatter communication (AmBC) systems, passive tags connect to a reader by reflecting an ambient radio frequency (RF) signal. However, the reader may not know the channel states and RF source parameters. The traditional energy detector (TED) appears to be an ideal solution. However, it performs poorly under these conditions. To address this, we propose two new detectors: (1) A joint correlation-energy detector (JCED) based on the first-order correlation of the received samples and (2) An improved energy detector (IED) based on the p-th norm of the received signal vector. We compare the performance of IED and TED under the generalized noise model using McLeish distribution and derive a general analytical formula for the area under the receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curves. Based on our results, both detectors outperform TED. For example, the probability of detection with a false alarm rate of 1\% for JCED and IED is 22.97\% and 5.41\% higher, respectively, compared to TED for a single-antenna reader. Using the direct interference cancellation (DIC) technique, these gains are 34.92\% and 3.7\%, respectively. With a four-antenna array at the reader and a 5\% false alarm rate, the JCED shows a significant BER improvement of 28.68\% without DIC and 48.21\% with DIC.

Improved Energy-Based Signal Detection for Ambient Backscatter Communications

TL;DR

The paper tackles AmBC signal detection under unknown CSI and ambient-source parameters, where TED fails to perform reliably. It introduces two non-coherent detectors, JCED (joint correlation-energy detector) and IED (p-norm energy detector), and analyzes their performance under a generalized McLeish noise model, deriving an analytical AUC for ROC. Results on both single- and multi-antenna readers show substantial performance gains over TED, with JCED offering the largest improvements, especially when direct interference cancellation (DIC) is employed and with antenna diversity. The work provides closed-form detector statistics, noise-robust AUC expressions, and comprehensive simulations, highlighting practical gains for AmBC in noisy, uncertain environments and guiding future non-linear and MIMO extensions.

Abstract

In ambient backscatter communication (AmBC) systems, passive tags connect to a reader by reflecting an ambient radio frequency (RF) signal. However, the reader may not know the channel states and RF source parameters. The traditional energy detector (TED) appears to be an ideal solution. However, it performs poorly under these conditions. To address this, we propose two new detectors: (1) A joint correlation-energy detector (JCED) based on the first-order correlation of the received samples and (2) An improved energy detector (IED) based on the p-th norm of the received signal vector. We compare the performance of IED and TED under the generalized noise model using McLeish distribution and derive a general analytical formula for the area under the receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curves. Based on our results, both detectors outperform TED. For example, the probability of detection with a false alarm rate of 1\% for JCED and IED is 22.97\% and 5.41\% higher, respectively, compared to TED for a single-antenna reader. Using the direct interference cancellation (DIC) technique, these gains are 34.92\% and 3.7\%, respectively. With a four-antenna array at the reader and a 5\% false alarm rate, the JCED shows a significant BER improvement of 28.68\% without DIC and 48.21\% with DIC.
Paper Structure (25 sections, 3 theorems, 71 equations, 15 figures, 2 tables)

This paper contains 25 sections, 3 theorems, 71 equations, 15 figures, 2 tables.

Table of Contents

  1. Introduction
  2. Coherent detection in AmBC systems
  3. Non-coherent detection in AmBC systems
  4. Motivation and Contributions
  5. Background
  6. AmBC System Model
  7. Channel models
  8. Signal model
  9. Direct interference cancellation
  10. Detector Design: Single-Antenna Reader
  11. JCED
  12. IED
  13. TED
  14. IED under generalized noise
  15. JCED under generalized noise
  16. ...and 10 more sections

Key Result

Proposition 1

The covariance between $Z_1$ and $Z_2$ can be written as

Figures (15)

  • Figure 1: AmBC network of an RF signal source, a reader, and a passive tag.
  • Figure 2: The JCED binary hypothesis testing process.
  • Figure 3: With DIC technique
  • Figure 4: Without DIC technique
  • Figure 6: With DIC technique.
  • ...and 10 more figures

Theorems & Definitions (6)

  • Proposition 1
  • proof
  • Proposition 2
  • proof
  • Proposition 3
  • proof