Joint Wireless Information and Energy Transfer in a K-User MIMO Interference Channel

Recently, joint wireless information and energy transfer (JWIET) methods have been proposed to relieve the battery limitation of wireless devices. However, the JWIET in a general K-user MIMO interference channel (IFC) has been unexplored so far. In this paper, we investigate for the first time the JWIET in K-user MIMO IFC, in which receivers either decode the incoming information data (information decoding, ID) or harvest the RF energy (energy harvesting, EH). In the K-user IFC, we consider three different scenarios according to the receiver mode -- i) multiple EH receivers and a single ID receiver, ii) multiple IDs and a single EH, and iii) multiple IDs and multiple EHs. For all scenarios, we have found a common necessary condition of the optimal transmission strategy and, accordingly, developed the transmission strategy that satisfies the common necessary condition, in which all the transmitters transferring energy exploit a rank-one energy beamforming. Furthermore, we have also proposed an iterative algorithm to optimize the covariance matrices of the transmitters that transfer information and the powers of the energy beamforming transmitters simultaneously, and identified the corresponding achievable rate-energy tradeoff region. Finally, we have shown that by selecting EH receivers according to their signal-to-leakage-and-harvested energy-ratio (SLER), we can improve the achievable rate-energy region further.Comment: arXiv admin note: text overlap with arXiv:1303.169

Energy-Efficient NOMA Enabled Heterogeneous Cloud Radio Access Networks

Heterogeneous cloud radio access networks (H-CRANs) are envisioned to be promising in the fifth generation (5G) wireless networks. H-CRANs enable users to enjoy diverse services with high energy efficiency, high spectral efficiency, and low-cost operation, which are achieved by using cloud computing and virtualization techniques. However, H-CRANs face many technical challenges due to massive user connectivity, increasingly severe spectrum scarcity and energy-constrained devices. These challenges may significantly decrease the quality of service of users if not properly tackled. Non-orthogonal multiple access (NOMA) schemes exploit non-orthogonal resources to provide services for multiple users and are receiving increasing attention for their potential of improving spectral and energy efficiency in 5G networks. In this article a framework for energy-efficient NOMA H-CRANs is presented. The enabling technologies for NOMA H-CRANs are surveyed. Challenges to implement these technologies and open issues are discussed. This article also presents the performance evaluation on energy efficiency of H-CRANs with NOMA.Comment: This work has been accepted by IEEE Network. Pages 18, Figure

Resource Allocation in Wireless Networks with RF Energy Harvesting and Transfer

Radio frequency (RF) energy harvesting and transfer techniques have recently become alternative methods to power the next generation of wireless networks. As this emerging technology enables proactive replenishment of wireless devices, it is advantageous in supporting applications with quality-of-service (QoS) requirement. This article focuses on the resource allocation issues in wireless networks with RF energy harvesting capability, referred to as RF energy harvesting networks (RF-EHNs). First, we present an overview of the RF-EHNs, followed by a review of a variety of issues regarding resource allocation. Then, we present a case study of designing in the receiver operation policy, which is of paramount importance in the RF-EHNs. We focus on QoS support and service differentiation, which have not been addressed by previous literatures. Furthermore, we outline some open research directions.Comment: To appear in IEEE Networ

Improved Rate-Energy Trade-off For SWIPT Using Chordal Distance Decomposition In Interference Alignment Networks

This paper investigates the simultaneous wireless information and power transfer (SWIPT) precoding scheme for K-user multiple-input-multiple-output (MIMO) interference channels (IC), for which interference alignment (IA) schemes provide optimal precoders to achieve full degrees-of-freedom (DoF) gain. However, harvesting RF energy simultaneously reduces the achievable DoFs. To study a trade-off between harvested energy and sum rate, the transceiver design problem is suboptimally formulated in literature via convex relaxations, which is still computationally intensive, especially for battery limited nodes running on harvested energy. In this paper, we propose a systematic method using chordal distance (CD) decomposition to obtain the balanced precoding, which improves the trade-off. Analysis shows that given the nonnegative value of CD, the achieved harvested energy for the proposed precoder is higher than that for perfect IA precoder. Moreover, energy constraints can be achieved, while maintaining a constant rate loss without losing DoFs via tuning the CD value and splitting factor. Simulation results verify the analysis and add that the IA schemes based on max-SINR or mean-squared error are better suited for SWIPT maximization than subspace or leakage minimization methods

Wireless information and energy transfer in multi-cluster MIMO uplink networks through opportunistic interference alignment

In this paper, we consider a K-cluster (K >= 2) simultaneous wireless information and power transfer (SWIPT) network, where S nodes (S >= 2) are selected from N nodes within each cluster for the uplink information transmission (IT) and the remaining N - S idle nodes are dedicated to energy harvesting (EH). Based on the intra-cluster performance aware (ICPA) philosophy, a pair of opportunistic interference alignment (OIA) schemes, namely the coarse ICPA-OIA (C-ICPA-OIA) and the refined ICPA-OIA (R-ICPA-OIA), are proposed for balancing the sum rate performance achieved and the energy harvested. Specifically, the C-ICPA-OIA treats the overall signal strength within the reference signal subspace (RSS) as a coarse description of the node’s effective signal strength. By comparison, to take full advantage of zero-forcing (ZF) based reception, the R-ICPA-OIA considers the projected signal strength with respect to the orthonormal basis of RSS as a substantially refined description of the node’s effective signal strength. Furthermore, we analyzed the harvested power and the working time of the system. Extensive simulation results validate our theoretical analyses, demonstrating that our schemes outperform the existing OIA schemes