Energy Harvesting Wireless Communications: A Review of Recent Advances

This article summarizes recent contributions in the broad area of energy harvesting wireless communications. In particular, we provide the current state of the art for wireless networks composed of energy harvesting nodes, starting from the information-theoretic performance limits to transmission scheduling policies and resource allocation, medium access and networking issues. The emerging related area of energy transfer for self-sustaining energy harvesting wireless networks is considered in detail covering both energy cooperation aspects and simultaneous energy and information transfer. Various potential models with energy harvesting nodes at different network scales are reviewed as well as models for energy consumption at the nodes.Comment: To appear in the IEEE Journal of Selected Areas in Communications (Special Issue: Wireless Communications Powered by Energy Harvesting and Wireless Energy Transfer

Wireless Information and Power Transfer in Communication Networks: Performance Analysis and Optimal Resource Allocation

Energy harvesting is considered as a prominent solution to supply the energy demand for low-power consuming devices and sensor nodes. This approach relinquishes the requirements of wired connections and regular battery replacements. This thesis analyzes the performance of energy harvesting communication networks under various operation protocols and multiple access schemes. Furthermore, since the radio frequency signal has energy, in addition to conveying information, it is also possible to power energy harvesting component while establishing data connectivity with information-decoding component. This leads to the concept of simultaneous wireless information and power transfer. The central goal of this thesis is to conduct a performance analysis in terms of throughput and energy efficiency, and determine optimal resource allocation strategies for wireless information and power transfer. In the first part of the thesis, simultaneous transfer of information and power through wireless links to energy harvesting and information decoding components is studied considering finite alphabet inputs. The concept of non-uniform probability distribution is introduced for an arbitrary input, and mathematical formulations that relate probability distribution to the required harvested energy level are provided. In addition, impact of statistical quality of service (QoS) constraints on the overall performance is studied, and power control algorithms are provided. Next, power allocation strategies that maximize the system energy efficiency subject to peak power constraints are determined for fading multiple access channels. The impact of channel characteristics, circuit power consumption and peak power level on the node selection, i.e., activation of user equipment, and the corresponding optimal transmit power level are addressed. Initially, wireless information transfer only is considered and subsequently wireless power transfer is taken into account. Assuming energy harvesting components, two scenarios are addressed based on the receiver architecture, i.e, having separated antenna or common antenna for the information decoding and energy harvesting components. In both cases, optimal SWIPT power control policies are identified, and impact of the required harvested energy is analyzed. The second line of research in this thesis focuses on wireless-powered communication devices that operate based on harvest-then-transmit protocol. Optimal time allocation for the downlink and uplink operation interval are identified formulating throughput maximization and energy-efficiency maximization problems. In addition, the performance gain among various types of downlink-uplink operation protocols is analyzed taking into account statistical QoS constraints. Furthermore, the performance analysis of energy harvesting user equipment is extended to full-duplex wireless information and power transfer as well as cellular networks. In full-duplex operation, optimal power control policies are identified, and the significance of introducing non-zero mean component on the information-bearing signal is analyzed. Meanwhile, SINR coverage probabilities, average throughput and energy efficiency are explicitly characterized for wireless-powered cellular networks, and the impact of downlink SWIPT and uplink mmWave schemes are addressed. In the final part of the thesis, energy efficiency is considered as the performance metric, and time allocation strategies that maximize energy efficiency for wireless powered communication networks with non-orthogonal multiple access scheme are determined. Low complex algorithms are proposed based on Dinkelbach’s method. In addition, the impact of statistical QoS constraints imposed as limitations on the buffer violation probabilities is addressed

Performance enhancement solutions in wireless communication networks

In this dissertation thesis, we study the new relaying protocols for different wireless network systems. We analyze and evaluate an efficiency of the transmission in terms of the outage probability over Rayleigh fading channels by mathematical analyses. The theoretical analyses are verified by performing Monte Carlo simulations. First, we study the cooperative relaying in the Two-Way Decode-and-Forward (DF) and multi-relay DF scheme for a secondary system to obtain spectrum access along with a primary system. In particular, we proposed the Two-Way DF scheme with Energy Harvesting, and the Two-Way DF Non-orthogonal Multiple Access (NOMA) scheme with digital network coding. Besides, we also investigate the wireless systems with multi-relay; the best relay selection is presented to optimize the effect of the proposed scheme. The transmission protocols of the proposed schemes EHAF (Energy Harvesting Amplify and Forward) and EHDF (Energy Harvesting Decode and Forward) are compared together in the same environment and in term of outage probability. Hence, with the obtained results, we conclude that the proposed schemes improve the performance of the wireless cooperative relaying systems, particularly their throughput. Second, we focus on investigating the NOMA technology and proposing the optimal solutions (protocols) to advance the data rate and to ensure the Quality of Service (QoS) for the users in the next generation of wireless communications. In this thesis, we propose a Two-Way DF NOMA scheme (called a TWNOMA protocol) in which an intermediate relay helps two source nodes to communicate with each other. Simulation and analysis results show that the proposed protocol TWNOMA is improving the data rate when comparing with a conventional Two-Way scheme using digital network coding (DNC) (called a TWDNC protocol), Two-Way scheme without using DNC (called a TWNDNC protocol) and Two-Way scheme in amplify-and-forward(AF) relay systems (called a TWANC protocol). Finally, we considered the combination of the NOMA and physical layer security (PLS) in the Underlay Cooperative Cognitive Network (UCCN). The best relay selection strategy is investigated, which uses the NOMA and considers the PLS to enhance the transmission efficiency and secrecy of the new generation wireless networks.V této dizertační práci je provedena studie nových přenosových protokolů pro různé bezdrátové síťové systémy. S využitím matematické analýzy jsme analyzovali a vyhodnotili efektivitu přenosu z hlediska pravděpodobnosti výpadku přes Rayleighův kanál. Teoretické analýzy jsou ověřeny provedenými simulacemi metodou Monte Carlo. Nejprve došlo ke studii kooperativního přenosu ve dvoucestném dekóduj-a-předej (Two-Way Decode-and-Forward–TWDF) a vícecestném DF schématu s větším počtem přenosových uzlů pro sekundární systém, kdy takto byl získán přístup ke spektru spolu s primárním systémem. Konkrétně jsme navrhli dvoucestné DF schéma se získáváním energie a dvoucestné DF neortogonální schéma s mnohonásobným přístupem (Non-orthogonal Multiple Access–NOMA) s digitálním síťovým kódováním. Kromě toho rovněž zkoumáme bezdrátové systémy s větším počtem přenosových uzlů, kde je přítomen výběr nejlepšího přenosového uzlu pro optimalizaci efektivnosti navrženého schématu. Přenosové protokoly navržených schémat EHAF (Energy Harvesting Amplify and Forward) a EHDF(Energy Harvesting Decode and Forward) jsou společně porovnány v identickém prostředí z pohledu pravděpodobnosti výpadku. Následně, na základě získaných výsledků, jsme dospěli k závěru, že navržená schémata vylepšují výkonnost bezdrátových kooperativních systémů, konkrétně jejich propustnost. Dále jsme se zaměřili na zkoumání NOMA technologie a navrhli optimální řešení (protokoly) pro urychlení datového přenosu a zajištění QoS v další generaci bezdrátových komunikací. V této práci jsme navrhli dvoucestné DF NOMA schéma (nazýváno jako TWNOMA protokol), ve kterém mezilehlý přenosový uzel napomáhá dvěma zdrojovým uzlům komunikovat mezi sebou. Výsledky simulace a analýzy ukazují, že navržený protokol TWNOMA vylepšuje dosaženou přenosovou rychlost v porovnání s konvenčním dvoucestným schématem používajícím DNC (TWDNC protokol), dvoucestným schématem bez použití DNC (TWNDNC protokol) a dvoucestným schématem v zesil-a-předej (amplify-and-forward) přenosových systémech (TWANC protokol). Nakonec jsme zvážili využití kombinace NOMA a zabezpečení fyzické vrstvy (Physical Layer Security–PLS) v podpůrné kooperativní kognitivní síti (Underlay Cooperative Cognitive Network–UCCN). Zde je zde zkoumán výběr nejlepšího přenosového uzlu, který užívá NOMA a bere v úvahu PLS pro efektivnější přenos a zabezpečení nové generace bezdrátových sítí.440 - Katedra telekomunikační technikyvyhově

Multi-Agent Reinforcement Learning-Based Buffer-Aided Relay Selection in IRS-Assisted Secure Cooperative Networks

This paper proposes a multi-agent deep reinforcement learning-based buffer-aided relay selection scheme for an intelligent reflecting surface (IRS)-assisted secure cooperative network in the presence of an eavesdropper. We consider a practical phase model where both phase shift and reflection amplitude are discrete variables to vary the reflection coefficients of the IRS. Furthermore, we introduce the buffer-aided relay to enhance the secrecy performance, but the use of the buffer leads to the cost of delay. Thus, we aim to maximize either the average secrecy rate with a delay constraint or the throughput with both delay and secrecy constraints, by jointly optimizing the buffer-aided relay selection and the IRS reflection coefficients. To obtain the solution of these two optimization problems, we divide each of the problems into two sub-tasks and then develop a distributed multi-agent reinforcement learning scheme for the two cooperative sub-tasks, each relay node represents an agent in the distributed learning. We apply the distributed reinforcement learning scheme to optimize the IRS reflection coefficients, and then utilize an agent on the source to learn the optimal relay selection based on the optimal IRS reflection coefficients in each iteration. Simulation results show that the proposed learning-based scheme uses an iterative approach to learn from the environment for approximating an optimal solution via the exploration of multiple agents, which outperforms the benchmark schemes

Optimal resource sharing and spectrum leasing in energy efficient relay-assisted networks

Assuming a bidirectional relay assisted network, we first study the problem of optimal resource sharing between two transceiver pairs. One of the pairs, referred to as the primary pair, owns the spectral resources while the other pair, called the secondary pair, is considered to own the relay infrastructure. Assuming amplify-and-forward relaying scheme and aiming to establish a cooperation between the two networks, we study three different design problems in a single carrier scenario. In the first approach we maximize the smaller of the secondary transceiver rates subject to two separate constraints on the total powers consumed in the primary and the secondary networks while providing a minimum data rate to the primary pair. In the second approach, we replace the per network power constraint by a constraint on the average total power consumed in both networks. The third approach combines the two aforementioned methods to materialize spectrum leasing and sharing for the case when the primary network is active with a certain probability. Then we investigate two different design approaches to the multi-carrier scenario. The first approach relies on maximizing the secondary network average sum-rate subject to two spectral power masks for the two networks while providing a minimum sum-rate to the primary pair in a multi-relay scenario. In the second approach, we replace the spectral power mask for each network by a constraint on the total power consumed in that network. Different from the previous studies, we further investigate the resource allocation problem between several energy harvesting relay nodes such that a unidirectional communication link is established between a pair of users and the harvested energy is optimally allocated between the relays such that the overall throughput of the network is maximized. Assuming the availability of full knowledge of channel state information and that of the energy packets, we maximize the throughput of the network under two sets of constraints on the status of the battery. We then consider the problem of maximizing the average throughput of the system, for the case when only the statistics of the channels are available

Cache-Enabled in Cooperative Cognitive Radio Networks for Transmission Performance

The proliferation of mobile devices that support the acceleration of data services (especially smartphones) has resulted in a dramatic increase in mobile traffic. Mobile data also increased exponentially, already exceeding the throughput of the backhaul. To improve spectrum utilization and increase mobile network traffic, in combination with content caching, we study the cooperation between primary and secondary networks via content caching. We consider that the secondary base station assists the primary user by pre-caching some popular primary contents. Thus, the secondary base station can obtain more licensed bandwidth to serve its own user. We mainly focus on the time delay from the backhaul link to the secondary base station. First, in terms of the content caching and the transmission strategies, we provide a cooperation scheme to maximize the secondary user’s effective data transmission rates under the constraint of the primary users target rate. Then, we investigate the impact of the caching allocation and prove that the formulated problem is a concave problem with regard to the caching capacity allocation for any given power allocation. Furthermore, we obtain the joint caching and power allocation by an effective bisection search algorithm. Finally, our results show that the content caching cooperation scheme can achieve significant performance gain for the primary and secondary systems over the traditional two-hop relay cooperation without caching