Reply #33: Didn't change my username, but...

[backscatter712]

backscatter comes from my last job - I worked as a software engineer for a small company that made RFID readers, and the principle on which RFID works is radio backscatter - the reader sends out a radio signal, which is picked up by the tag's antenna, and creates a tiny amount of electricity that goes to the RFID chip, runs its circuitry and does simple tasks like reading and writing to tag memory and returning output. The output is sent out by modulating the tag's backscatter - every wire in the world that has electricity flowing through it becomes an antenna. By changing the properties of the antenna in the tag as that little bit of electricity is charged up in it, a signal can be created that's picked up by the RFID reader.

Yeah, I'm a total geek.