Uplink Rate Maximization for Pinching Antenna- Assisted Covert Backscatter Communication

TL;DR

This paper explores the use of pinching antennas to enhance covert backscatter communication by optimizing antenna placement and power, significantly improving uplink data rates and energy harvesting while maintaining covertness.

Contribution

It introduces an AO-based optimization framework for PA-assisted BSC, addressing the double near-far problem and enhancing communication reliability and covertness.

Findings

Effective mitigation of the double near-far problem.

Improved uplink data rates and energy harvesting.

Maintained covertness under practical scenarios.

Abstract

The emerging pinching antenna (PA) technology enables flexible antenna positioning for creating line-of-sight (LoS) links, thus offering substantial potential to facilitate ambient signal-based backscatter communication (BSC). This paper investigates PA-assisted BSC for enhanced communication and covertness in the presence of a randomly distributed eavesdropper. An optimization problem is formulated to maximize the uplink covert transmission rate by jointly optimizing the transmit power and antenna positions while satisfying both communication reliability and covertness constraints. An alternative optimization (AO)-based framework is proposed to solve this problem. Numerical results demonstrate that the proposed PA-BSC effectively mitigates the double near-far problem, where energy harvesting and backscatter transmission degrade simultaneously due to distance disparities, thereby improving downlink energy harvesting and uplink data transmission while maintaining covertness performance under practical deployment scenarios.