II-NEW: RIBBN - A Research Infrastructure for Backscatter-Based Networks

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The ?Internet of Things? (IoT) vision requires tiny, intelligent, battery-less devices communicating with one another. However, reliance on power-hungry, active radios for communications has been impeding progress in realizing this vision. The proposed research infrastructure enabled by this project is geared towards enabling a paradigm shift resulting in realization of systems wherein radio-less backscattering devices communicate directly with each other as opposed to an active radio based device (like in traditional reader-tag based RFID systems). This award helps design and develop the Research Infrastructure for Backscatter-Based Networks or RIBBN that responds to this need for an integrated experimental platform which is both flexible and programmable at every layer so that new protocols and systems can be developed and evaluated. Use of RIBBN should help researchers and manufacturers to adopt RIBBN-based evaluation in their workflow while developing new designs faster and at a lower cost, thereby helping RFIDs make more inroads in the marketplace. On the educational front, RIBBN hopes to contribute to courseware development, summer projects of local high school students, and the WISE (Women In Science & Engineering) program in the university. RIBBN is unique in that it enables experimental research on a new paradigm for future IoT systems by providing three essential capabilities in the same platform ? 1) backscatter-based tag-to-tag communication, 2) on-board sensing and 3) computational ability. RIBBN is developed as a modular as well as programmable platform. It enables a design and experimentation with new tag architectures and protocols in a unified, open, reference system. RIBBN promotes and enhances research in several areas including (1) development and evaluation of various protocols in both lower and upper layers, (2) power harvesting, (3) security and privacy issues in backscattered tag-to-tag communications, (4) relevant signal and information processing methods, and (5) Internet of Things. The proposed effort leads to a setup that we refer to as the RIBBN Lab, an organized testbed facility for conducting research on backscatter-based networks.