Concept of Beam Steerable Transponder based on Load Modulation

Paper in proceeding, 2020

The concept of beam steering transponder based on load modulation is proposed to enhance the received power of backscattered communication devices. The transponder consists of antenna array elements of equal length operates at the Wi-Fi frequency band of 2.4GHz. By properly weighting the modulated signal in each port, the received power can be maximized in a particular direction depending on the direction of arrival (DoA) of the signal. The weighting is done differently for each direction. It provides up to approximately 11dB improvement in received power with weighting compared to backscatter communication with a single antenna transponder. The concept is studied theoretically and by simulations.