# Applications of Backscatter Communications for Healthcare Networks

## TL;DR

This paper reviews the applications of backscatter communication in healthcare, providing a taxonomy, identifying research gaps, and demonstrating its potential for long-distance communication in medical environments.

## Contribution

It offers a comprehensive taxonomy and gap analysis of backscatter communication applications in healthcare, along with experimental validation of its communication range.

## Key findings

- Backscatter devices can communicate over large distances indoors.
- The study provides a detailed taxonomy of healthcare-related backscatter applications.
- Experimental results show promising link budget performance at 590 MHz.

## Abstract

Backscatter communication is expected to help in revitalizing the domain of healthcare through its myriad applications. From on-body sensors to in-body implants and miniature embeddable devices, there are many potential use cases that can leverage the miniature and low-powered nature of backscatter devices. However, the existing literature lacks a comprehensive study that provides a distilled review of the latest studies on backscatter communications from the healthcare perspective. Thus, with the objective to promote the utility of backscatter communication in healthcare, this paper aims to identify specific applications of backscatter systems. A detailed taxonomy of recent studies and gap analysis for future research directions are provided in this work. Finally, we conduct measurements at 590 MHz in different propagation environments with the in-house designed backscatter device. The link budget results show the promise of backscatter devices to communicate over large distances for indoor environments which demonstrates its potential in the healthcare system.