The highly power-efficient backscattering communication scheme holds solid potentials to lead the Internet of Things technologies. However, the asymmetric radio frontend architectures that ensure cheap and pervasive communicating things and tags at one end of the link, overburden the other end of the link (“reader”) with complicated and expensive hardware. This turns out to prevent the integration of the technology in the wide spectrum of consumer electronic devices (e.g. RF smartphone platforms). By separating TX and RX frequency bands, the harmonic backscattering scheme drastically loosens the technological constraints toward integration. We propose here the use of a single tunnel diode to build a harmonic reflection amplifier (HRA), using the nonlinear behavior of the negative differential resistance region to both generate harmonics and amplify the signals. The circuit also behaves like a common backscatter, with the same-frequency backscattering modulation for operation with legacy readers. Operating below 150 mV, the HRA drains 144- $\mu \text{W}$ dc power with a measured positive conversion gain of 18 dB.

中文翻译：

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用于广泛反向散射物联网的谐波反射放大器

高能效的反向散射通信方案具有引领物联网技术的巨大潜力。然而，非对称无线电前端架构可确保在链路的一端进行廉价且普遍的通信事物和标签，但复杂且昂贵的硬件使链路的另一端（“阅读器”）负担过重。事实证明，这会阻止将该技术集成到广泛的消费电子设备（例如 RF 智能手机平台）中。通过分离 TX 和 RX 频段，谐波反向散射方案大大放松了对集成的技术限制。我们在这里建议使用单个隧道二极管来构建谐波反射放大器 (HRA)，使用负差分电阻区域的非线性行为来生成谐波并放大信号。该电路的行为也像一个普通的反向散射，具有相同频率的反向散射调制，用于与传统阅读器的操作。在低于 150 mV 的电压下运行时，HRA 消耗 144- $\mu \text{W}$ 直流功率，测量的正转换增益为 18 dB。