RIS-aided Wireless-Powered Backscatter Communications for Sustainable Internet of Underground Things

TL;DR

This paper proposes integrating reconfigurable intelligent surfaces with wireless-powered backscatter underground sensor networks to overcome underground channel impairments, enhancing data throughput for sustainable Internet of Underground Things applications.

Contribution

It introduces a novel RIS-aided architecture for WPBUSNs, reviews recent advancements, and demonstrates improved throughput in a farming case study.

Findings

RIS-aided WPBUSNs outperform benchmarks in sum throughput

The framework effectively mitigates underground channel impairments

Demonstrated benefits in a realistic farming scenario

Abstract

Wireless-powered underground sensor networks (WPUSNs), which enable wireless energy transfer to sensors located underground, is a promising approach for establishing sustainable internet of underground things (IoUT). To support urgent information transmission and improve resource utilization within WPUSNs, backscatter communication (BC) is introduced, resulting in what is known as wireless-powered backscatter underground sensor networks (WPBUSNs). Nevertheless, the performance of WPBUSNs is significantly limited by severe channel impairments caused by the underground soil and the blockage of direct links. To overcome this challenge, in this work, we propose integrating reconfigurable intelligent surface (RIS) with WPBUSNs, leading to the development of RIS-aided WPBUSNs. We begin by reviewing the recent advancements in BC-WPUSNs and RIS. Then, we propose a general architecture of RIS-aided WPBUSNs across various IoUT scenarios, and discuss its advantages and implementation challenges. To illustrate the effectiveness of RIS-aided WPBUSNs, we focus on a realistic farming case study, demonstrating that our proposed framework outperforms the three benchmarks in terms of the sum throughput. Finally, we discuss the open challenges and future research directions for translating this study into practical IoUT applications.