Platforms and Technologies for Low-Power Wireless Systems

Abstract

Achieving the vision of ubiquitous connectivity requires addressing multiple challenges across low-power wireless communication, network protocols and sensing. This thesis presents four technologies that address some of the challenges in achieving ubiquitous connectivity. First, the thesis describes an ultra-low-power high-definition video streaming system that enables video streaming from a low-power, wearable camera to a nearby mobile device. Second, we present LoRa backscatter that enables the first wide-area backscatter communication system to achieve long-range low-power cheap wireless communication at tens of microwatts of power. Third, we build NetScatter, the first wireless protocol that can scale to hundreds and thousands of concurrent transmissions from backscatter devices. Finally, we describe TinySDR platform, a standalone, fully programmable low power software-defined radio solution that can be duty cycled for battery operation like a real low-power sensor endpoint, and more importantly, can be programmed over the air to allow for large scale deployment.