Energy-Efficient SWIPT in IoT Distributed Antenna Systems

The rapid growth of Internet of Things (IoT) dramatically increases power consumption of wireless devices. Simultaneous wireless information and power transfer (SWIPT) is a promising solution for sustainable operation of IoT devices. In this paper, we study energy efficiency (EE) in SWIPT-based distributed antenna system (DAS), where power splitting (PS) is applied at IoT devices to coordinate the energy harvesting (EH) and information decoding (ID) processes by varying transmit power of distributed antenna (DA) ports and PS ratios of IoT devices. In the case of single IoT device, we find the optimal closed-form solution by deriving some useful properties based on Karush-Kuhn-Tucker (KKT) conditions and the solution is no need for numerical iterations. For the case of multiple IoT devices, we propose an efficient suboptimal algorithm to solve the EE maximization problem. Simulation results show that the proposed schemes achieve better EE performance compared with other benchmark schemes in both single and multiple IoT devices cases.Comment: accepted by the IEEE Internet of Things Journa

Wireless Powered Communication: Opportunities and Challenges

The performance of wireless communication is fundamentally constrained by the limited battery life of wireless devices, whose operations are frequently disrupted due to the need of manual battery replacement/recharging. The recent advance in radio frequency (RF) enabled wireless energy transfer (WET) technology provides an attractive solution named wireless powered communication (WPC), where the wireless devices are powered by dedicated wireless power transmitters to provide continuous and stable microwave energy over the air. As a key enabling technology for truly perpetual communications, WPC opens up the potential to build a network with larger throughput, higher robustness, and increased flexibility compared to its battery-powered counterpart. However, the combination of wireless energy and information transmissions also raises many new research problems and implementation issues to be addressed. In this article, we provide an overview of state-of-the-art RF-enabled WET technologies and their applications to wireless communications, with highlights on the key design challenges, solutions, and opportunities ahead.Comment: Accepted for publication by IEEE Communications Magazin

Robust Designs of Beamforming and Power Splitting for Distributed Antenna Systems with Wireless Energy Harvesting

In this paper, we investigate a multiuser distributed antenna system with simultaneous wireless information and power transmission under the assumption of imperfect channel state information (CSI). In this system, a distributed antenna port with multiple antennas supports a set of mobile stations who can decode information and harvest energy simultaneously via a power splitter. To design robust transmit beamforming vectors and the power splitting (PS) factors in the presence of CSI errors, we maximize the average worst-case signal-to-interference-plus- noise ratio (SINR) while achieving individual energy harvesting constraint for each mobile station. First, we develop an efficient algorithm to convert the max-min SINR problem to a set of "dual" min-max power balancing problems. Then, motivated by the penalty function method, an iterative algorithm based on semi-definite programming (SDP) is proposed to achieve a local optimal rank-one solution. Also, to reduce the computational complexity, we present another iterative scheme based on the Lagrangian method and the successive convex approximation (SCA) technique to yield a suboptimal solution. Simulation results are shown to validate the robustness and effectiveness of the proposed algorithms.Comment: To appear in IEEE Systems Journal. (10 pages, 6 figures

Fronthaul-Aware Group Sparse Precoding and Signal Splitting in SWIPT C-RAN

We investigate the precoding, remote radio head (RRH) selection and signal splitting in the simultaneous wireless information and power transferring (SWIPT) cloud radio access networks \mbox{(C-RANs)}. The objective is to minimize the power consumption of the SWIPT C-RAN. Different from the existing literature, we consider the nonlinear fronthaul power consumption and the multiple antenna RRHs. By switching off the unnecessary RRHs, the group sparsity of the precoding coefficients is introduced, which indicates that the precoding process and the RRH selection are coupled. In order to overcome these issues, a group sparse precoding and signal splitting algorithm is proposed based on the majorization-minimization framework, and the convergence behavior is established. Numerical results are used to verify our proposed studies.Comment: Accepted by IEEE Globecom 201

Robust Energy Efficient Beamforming in MISOME-SWIPT Systems With Proportional Secrecy Rate

The joint design of beamforming vector and artificial noise covariance matrix is investigated for the multiple-input-single-output-multiple-eavesdropper simultaneous wireless information and power transferring \mbox{(MISOME-SWIPT)} systems. In the MISOME-SWIPT system, the base station delivers information signals to the legitimate user equipments and broadcasts jamming signals to the eavesdroppers. A secrecy energy efficiency (SEE) maximization problem is formulated for the considered \mbox{MISOME-SWIPT} system with imperfect channel state information, where the SEE is defined as the ratio of sum secrecy rate over total power consumption. Since the formulated SEE maximization problem is non-convex, it is first recast into a series of convex problems in order to obtain the optimal solution with a reasonable computational complexity. Two suboptimal solutions are also proposed based on the heuristic beamforming techniques that trade performance for computational complexity. In addition, the analysis of computational complexity is performed for the optimal and suboptimal solutions. Numerical results are used to verify the performance of proposed algorithms and to reveal practical insights.Comment: This work was accepted by IEEE JSAC. arXiv admin note: text overlap with arXiv:1808.0200

DEBIT: Distributed Energy Beamforming and Information Transfer for Multiway Relay Networks

In this paper, we propose a new distributed energy beamforming and information transfer (DEBIT) scheme for realizing simultaneous wireless information and power transfer (SWIPT) in multiway relay networks (MWRNs), where multiple single-antenna users exchange information via an energy-constrained single-antenna relay node. We investigate the optimal transceiver designs to maximize the achievable sum-rate or the harvested power. The resultant sum-rate maximization problem is non-convex and the global optimal solution can be obtained through a three-dimensional search in combination with conventional convex optimization. To reduce the computation complexity, a suboptimal DEBIT scheme is also proposed, for which the optimization problem becomes linear programming. The achievable sum-rate performance is analyzed and a closed-form lower bound is derived for the MWRN with a large number of users. Furthermore, we consider the harvested-power maximization problem under a target sum-rate constraint, and derive a lower bound of the average harvested power for MWRNs with a large number of users. Numerical results show that the DEBIT scheme significantly outperforms the conventional SWIPT and the derived lower bounds are tight.Comment: 8 page

Exploiting Interference for Secrecy Wireless Information and Power Transfer

Radio-frequency (RF) signals enabled wireless information and power transfer (WIPT) is a cost-effective technique to achieve two-way communications and at the same time provide energy supplies for low-power wireless devices. However, the information transmission in WIPT is vulnerable to the eavesdropping by the energy receivers (ERs). To achieve secrecy communications with information nodes (INs) while satisfying the energy transfer requirement of ERs, an efficient solution is to exploit a dual use of the energy signals also as useful interference or artificial noise (AN) to interfere with the ERs, thus preventing against their potential information eavesdropping. Towards this end, this article provides an overview on the joint design of energy and information signals to achieve energy-efficient and secure WIPT under various practical setups, including simultaneous wireless information and power transfer (SWIPT), wireless powered cooperative relaying and jamming, and wireless powered communication networks (WPCN). We also present some research directions that are worth pursuing in the future.Comment: Submitted for possible publicatio

Multi-Objective Beamforming for Energy-Efficient SWIPT Systems

In this paper, we study the resource allocation algorithm design for energy-efficient simultaneous wireless information and power transfer (SWIPT) systems. The considered system comprises a transmitter, an information receiver, and multiple energy harvesting receivers equipped with multiple antennas. We propose a multi-objective optimization framework to study the trade-off between the maximization of the energy efficiency of information transmission and the maximization of wireless power transfer efficiency. The proposed problem formulation takes into account the per antenna circuit power consumption of the transmitter and the imperfect channel state information of the energy harvesting receivers. The adopted non-convex multi-objective optimization problem is transformed into an equivalent rank-constrained semidefinite program (SDP) and optimally solved by SDP relaxation. Numerical results unveil an interesting trade-off between the considered conflicting system design objectives and reveal the benefits of multiple transmit antennas for improving system energy efficiency.Comment: accepted, 2016 International Conference on Computing, Networking and Communications, Wireless Communications Symposiu

Wireless Information and Power Transfer Design for Energy Cooperation Distributed Antenna Systems

Distributed antenna systems (DAS) have been widely implemented in state-of-the-art cellular communication systems to cover dead spots. Recent studies have also indicated that DAS have advantages in wireless energy transfer (WET). In this paper, we study simultaneous wireless information and power transfer (SWIPT) for a multiple-input single-output (MISO) DAS in the downlink which consists of arbitrarily distributed remote antenna units (RAUs). In order to save the energy cost, we adopt energy cooperation of energy harvesting (EH) and two-way energy flows to let the RAUs trade their harvested energy through the smart grid network. Under individual EH constraints, per-RAU power constraints and various smart grid considerations, we investigate a power management strategy that determines how to utilize the stochastically spatially distributed harvested energy at the RAUs and how to trade the energy with the smart grid simultaneously to supply maximum wireless information transfer (WIT) with a minimum WET constraint for a receiver adopting power splitting (PS). Our analysis shows that the optimal design can be achieved in two steps. The first step is to maximize a new objective that can simultaneously maximize both WET and WIT, considering both the smart grid profitable and smart grid neutral cases. For the grid-profitable case, we derive the optimal full power strategy and provide a closed-form result to see under what condition this strategy is used. On the other hand, for the grid-neutral case, we illustrate that the optimal power policy has a double-threshold structure and present an optimal allocation strategy. The second step is then to solve the whole problem by obtaining the splitting power ratio based on the minimum WET constraint. Simulation results are provided to evaluate the performance under various settings and characterize the double-threshold structure.Comment: 11 pages, 7 figure

Artificial Noise Aided Secrecy Information and Power Transfer in OFDMA Systems

In this paper, we study simultaneous wireless information and power transfer (SWIPT) in orthogonal frequency division multiple access (OFDMA) systems with the coexistence of information receivers (IRs) and energy receivers (ERs). The IRs are served with best-effort secrecy data and the ERs harvest energy with minimum required harvested power. To enhance the physical layer security for IRs and yet satisfy energy harvesting requirements for ERs, we propose a new frequency domain artificial noise (AN) aided transmission strategy. With the new strategy, we study the optimal resource allocation for the weighted sum secrecy rate maximization for IRs by power and subcarrier allocation at the transmitter. The studied problem is shown to be a mixed integer programming problem and thus non-convex, while we propose an efficient algorithm for solving it based on the Lagrange duality method. To further reduce the computational complexity, we also propose a suboptimal algorithm of lower complexity. The simulation results illustrate the effectiveness of proposed algorithms as compared against other heuristic schemes.Comment: To appeal in IEEE Transactions on Wireless Communication