A Survey on Green Designs for Energy Harvesting Backscatter Communications to Enable Sustainable IoT

Jiawang Zeng, Tianyi Zhang, Deepak Mishra (), Jinhong Yuan and Aruna Seneviratne
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Jiawang Zeng: School of Electrical Engineering and Telecommunications, University of New South Wales (UNSW), Sydney, NSW 2052, Australia
Tianyi Zhang: School of Electrical Engineering and Telecommunications, University of New South Wales (UNSW), Sydney, NSW 2052, Australia
Deepak Mishra: School of Electrical Engineering and Telecommunications, University of New South Wales (UNSW), Sydney, NSW 2052, Australia
Jinhong Yuan: School of Electrical Engineering and Telecommunications, University of New South Wales (UNSW), Sydney, NSW 2052, Australia
Aruna Seneviratne: School of Electrical Engineering and Telecommunications, University of New South Wales (UNSW), Sydney, NSW 2052, Australia

Energies, 2025, vol. 18, issue 4, 1-46

Abstract: The majority of Internet of Things (IoT) devices operate with limited energy resources, making it essential to prioritize sustainable carbon emissions and the adoption of energy-efficient IoT solutions. For this reason, backscatter communication (BackCom) devices are widely deployed because they are mostly passive devices that harvest energy from RF signals and modulate the information onto reflected signals by adjusting the impedance of the load. BackCom devices have a simple structure, low cost, and easy deployment. Although BackCom plays a positive role in improving energy efficiency, IoT systems that deploy many EH BackCom devices and connect numerous peripherals still face difficulties in terms of power limitations because the energy required for their operation is almost all harvested from the outside. This paper comprehensively reviews the approaches to solving the energy efficiency issues in energy harvesting (EH) BackCom-enabled IoT systems, which mainly include high-efficiency EH and energy conversion designs for the BackCom tag, renewable energy harvesting, waveform design, and resource allocation for readers. We also investigate various green designs for cooperative EH BackCom systems. Finally, we indicate the new applications and open challenges of green BackCom IoT systems, as well as future research directions.

Keywords: backscatter communication; energy harvesting; energy efficiency; sustainable internet of things; green resource allocation (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: Q Q0 Q4 Q40 Q41 Q42 Q43 Q47 Q48 Q49 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025
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