Multi-level Energy Detection for Ambient Backscatter System with M-PSK Modulation

Existing Ambient Backscatter systems make use of two-state ASK or PSK scattering to communicate data among low-power transceivers, where data are transferred at the rate of only one bit per symbol period. Motivated by improving data rate between two transceivers in the Internet of Things and with the low-power constraint, we investigate the situation where the backscattering device employs M-ary PSK modulation. We derive the multi-level energy detector at the receiving device from the multiple hypotheses testing and compute the closed-form expressions of thresholds and symbol error rate. Numerical simulation results are provided to verify the theoretical studies.