Small-scale fading for an indoor wireless channel with modulated backscatter

Modulated backscatter is a RF transmission technique useful for short-range, low-data-rate applications constrained to have extremely low power requirements, such as electronic shelf tags, RF tags, and some sensor applications. The small-scale fading observed on the backscattered signal has deeper fades than a signal from a traditional one-way link of the same range in the same environment because the fading on the backscattered signal is a product of the fading on the off-board generated carrier times the fading on the reflected signal. We present the first published reports of measured cumulative distribution functions for the small-scale fading at 2.4 GHz over this type of link.