Hybrid analog-digital backscatter platform for high data rate, battery-free sensing

This paper presents a hybrid analog-digital backscatter platform for high data rate battery free wireless sensing. A digital RFID platform (WISP) has been integrated with an analog sensor (microphone) to develop a digitally addressable RFID tag which uses analog backscatter for high data rate transmission of sensor data (audio). The hybrid WISP operates in two modes: digital mode (default mode) to transmit and receive digital data (as per EPC Gen 2 RFID protocol) and analog mode (activated by Gen 2 READ command) to backscatter audio sensor data. We report an operating range of more than 4 meters for the digitally addressable, battery free wireless audio sensor.