Time Index Modulation-Driven Standalone RIS Mechanism for Symbiotic Radio

TL;DR

This paper introduces a novel symbiotic radio system utilizing a standalone RIS powered by wireless energy harvesting, which employs time index modulation to enhance data transmission and energy efficiency in IoT networks.

Contribution

It proposes a low-power RIS mechanism that uses TIM and WEH to enable mutualistic relationships between active and passive devices in a symbiotic radio environment.

Findings

RIS achieves effective energy harvesting and power sustainability.

TIM improves data transmission efficiency and reliability.

System demonstrates low BER and sufficient harvested power.

Abstract

The rising demand for energy and spectrum resources in next-generation Internet-of-things (IoT) systems accounts for innovative modes of information and power transfer. One potential solution is to harness the active transmission capability of devices to facilitate data transmission and wireless energy harvesting (WEH) for backscatter communication so as to form a symbiotic radio (SR) environment in a mutualistic manner. Additionally, incorporating reconfigurable intelligent surfaces (RISs) into the SR environment can provide an additional link and enhance the reliability of backscatter communication, thereby reinforcing the symbiotic relationships between active and passive devices. This paper proposes a novel SR system where a standalone RIS sustains its functions through WEH based on a low-power RIS structure and establishes mutualistic symbiosis by utilizing a signal conveyed by the primary transmitter (PTx) to assist ongoing transmissions and convey information to the primary receiver (PRx). The PTx employs time index modulation (TIM) to transmit information to the PRx and power to the RIS and energy harvester (EH). A log-likelihood ratio (LLR)-based detector is presented to address challenges in the TIM scheme. Finally, the performance of the proposed scheme is investigated in terms of harvested direct current (DC) power at the RIS and EH, as well as the bit error rate (BER) at the PRx.