Detection at Multi-Antenna Reader with Correlated RF Source in Ambient Backscatter Communication

This work considers a multi-antenna reader and a generalized correlated radio-frequency (RF) source signal in the ambient backscatter communication (AmBC) system. An optimal combining detector (OCD) at the multi-antenna reader is presented for the AmBC system, which detects the signal information embedded by the tag onto a generalized correlated RF source signal. The optimal combining detection statistic for the considered system framework maximizes the signal-to-interference-plus-noise ratio (SINR) at the reader. Further, the receiver operating characteristic (ROC) plots for the proposed optimal detector demonstrate superior performance over the allied detectors.