  We consider a wireless sensor network that uses inductive near-field coupling
for wireless powering or communication, or for both. The severely limited range
of an inductively coupled source-destination pair can be improved using
resonant relay devices, which are purely passive in nature. Utilization of such
magneto-inductive relays has only been studied for regular network topologies,
allowing simplified assumptions on the mutual antenna couplings. In this work
we present an analysis of magneto-inductive passive relaying in arbitrarily
arranged networks. We find that the resulting channel has characteristics
similar to multipath fading: the channel power gain is governed by a
non-coherent sum of phasors, resulting in increased frequency selectivity. We
propose and study two strategies to increase the channel power gain of random
relay networks: i) deactivation of individual relays by open-circuit switching
and ii) frequency tuning. The presented results show that both methods improve
the utilization of available passive relays, leading to reliable and
significant performance gains.
