Oppermann, PeterPeterOppermannRenner, Bernd-ChristianBernd-ChristianRenner2023-04-032023-04-032023-03-30Sensors 23 (7): 3617 (2023-03-30)http://hdl.handle.net/11420/15092Sensors for industrial and structural health monitoring are often in shielded and hard-to-reach places. Acoustic wireless power transfer (WPT) and piezoelectric backscatter enable batteryless sensors in such scenarios. Although the low efficiency of WPT demands power-conserving sensor nodes, backscatter communication, which consumes near-zero power, has not yet been combined with WPT. This study reviews the available approaches to acoustic WPT and active and passive acoustic through-metal communication. We design a batteryless and backscattering tag prototype from commercially available components. Analysis of the prototypes reveals that low-power hardware poses additional challenges for communication, i.e., unstable and inaccurate oscillators. Therefore, we implement a software-defined receiver using digital phase-locked loops (DPLLs) to mitigate the effects of oscillator instability. We show that DPLLs enable reliable backscatter communication with inaccurate clocks using simulation and real-world measurements. Our prototype achieves communication at 2 kBs⁻¹ over a distance of 3 m. Furthermore, during transmission, the prototype consumes less than 300 μW power. At the same time, over 4 mW of power is received through wireless transmission over a distance of 3 m with an efficiency of 2.8%.en1424-822020237MDPIhttps://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/wireless power transferultrasonicsbackscatter communicationTechnikIngenieurwissenschaftenJournal Article10.15480/882.504710.3390/s2307361710.15480/882.5047Journal Article