Optimizing Performance of a Backscatter-Assisted Underlay Network

In this letter, we consider a secondary network (SN) in which an ambient backscatter device (BD) utilizes the secondary transmitter (ST) signal to communicate its own information to the secondary destination (SD). Optimizing performance of such networks is complicated by signal reflections by the BD. It is shown in this work how the secondary transmit power and the reflection coefficient of the BD can both be jointly optimized using a simple restricted one dimensional search to satisfy the quality of service (QoS) constraints of SN as well as the primary network (PN) while maximizing performance of the backscatter link, which is termed the tertiary network (TN). Only statistical channel knowledge is used for this purpose. It is seen that careful optimization can improve spectral efficiency. Simulations validate the derived analytical expressions.