Backscatter Communications with NOMA (Invited Paper)

In this paper, we study a multiple access monostatic backscatter communication (BackCom) system, where one reader talks to multiple backscatter nodes (BNs). We propose to use non- orthogonal multiple access (NOMA) to improve the efficiency of BackCom system. Specifically, the reader uses the feedback signal during the training phase to separate the multiple BNs into two groups. The reader then randomly pairs the BNs from these two groups to implement NOMA. We propose to set the reflection coefficients for these two groups differently to further distinguish the reflected signal power for the paired BNs. To characterize the network performance, we derive an analytical expression for the success rate which shows the percentage of bits that can be successfully decoded in one time slot. We also present the design guideline of the reflection coefficients for the two groups to maximize the system performance. Our numerical results show that increasing the readers transmit power has little impact on the system performance when the channel condition on the transmission link is less severe. Instead, the proper choice of the reflection coefficients for the two groups of BNs can greatly enhance the BackCom system.