On the Capacity of Bi-static Modulated Re-scatter Systems

In ambient re-scatter1 communications, devices convey information by modulating and re-scattering the radio frequency signals impinging on their antennas. In this correspondence, we consider a system consisting of a modulated continuous carrier multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) link (primary) and a multi-antenna modulated re-scatter (MRS) node (secondary), where the MRS node uses the signal generated by the primary transmitter. The receiver tries to decode both the original transmitted message and the information added by the MRS antennas. We show that the sum capacity of this system exceeds that, which the MIMO system could achieve alone. We also consider the impact of channel estimation errors under least squares channel estimation. The results suggest that the estimation error has negative impact on the capacity, however, its severity can be minimised by increasing the number of receiver antennas.