Recent Advances in Joint Wireless Energy and Information Transfer

In this paper, we provide an overview of the recent advances in microwave-enabled wireless energy transfer (WET) technologies and their applications in wireless communications. Specifically, we divide our discussions into three parts. First, we introduce the state-of-the-art WET technologies and the signal processing techniques to maximize the energy transfer efficiency. Then, we discuss an interesting paradigm named simultaneous wireless information and power transfer (SWIPT), where energy and information are jointly transmitted using the same radio waveform. At last, we review the recent progress in wireless powered communication networks (WPCN), where wireless devices communicate using the power harvested by means of WET. Extensions and future directions are also discussed in each of these areas.Comment: Conference submission accepted by ITW 201

Joint Transceiver Design Algorithms for Multiuser MISO Relay Systems with Energy Harvesting

In this paper, we investigate a multiuser relay system with simultaneous wireless information and power transfer. Assuming that both base station (BS) and relay station (RS) are equipped with multiple antennas, this work studies the joint transceiver design problem for the BS beamforming vectors, the RS amplify-and-forward transformation matrix and the power splitting (PS) ratios at the single-antenna receivers. Firstly, an iterative algorithm based on alternating optimization (AO) and with guaranteed convergence is proposed to successively optimize the transceiver coefficients. Secondly, a novel design scheme based on switched relaying (SR) is proposed that can significantly reduce the computational complexity and overhead of the AO based designs while maintaining a similar performance. In the proposed SR scheme, the RS is equipped with a codebook of permutation matrices. For each permutation matrix, a latent transceiver is designed which consists of BS beamforming vectors, optimally scaled RS permutation matrix and receiver PS ratios. For the given CSI, the optimal transceiver with the lowest total power consumption is selected for transmission. We propose a concave-convex procedure based and subgradient-type iterative algorithms for the non-robust and robust latent transceiver designs. Simulation results are presented to validate the effectiveness of all the proposed algorithms

Robust Transceiver Design for MISO Interference Channel with Energy Harvesting

In this paper, we consider multiuser multiple-input single-output (MISO) interference channel where the received signal is divided into two parts for information decoding and energy harvesting (EH), respectively. The transmit beamforming vectors and receive power splitting (PS) ratios are jointly designed in order to minimize the total transmission power subject to both signal-to-interference-plus-noise ratio (SINR) and EH constraints. Most joint beamforming and power splitting (JBPS) designs assume that perfect channel state information (CSI) is available; however CSI errors are inevitable in practice. To overcome this limitation, we study the robust JBPS design problem assuming a norm-bounded error (NBE) model for the CSI. Three different solution approaches are proposed for the robust JBPS problem, each one leading to a different computational algorithm. Firstly, an efficient semidefinite relaxation (SDR)-based approach is presented to solve the highly non-convex JBPS problem, where the latter can be formulated as a semidefinite programming (SDP) problem. A rank-one recovery method is provided to recover a robust feasible solution to the original problem. Secondly, based on second order cone programming (SOCP) relaxation, we propose a low complexity approach with the aid of a closed-form robust solution recovery method. Thirdly, a new iterative method is also provided which can achieve near-optimal performance when the SDR-based algorithm results in a higher-rank solution. We prove that this iterative algorithm monotonically converges to a Karush-Kuhn-Tucker (KKT) solution of the robust JBPS problem. Finally, simulation results are presented to validate the robustness and efficiency of the proposed algorithms.Comment: 13 pages, 8 figures. arXiv admin note: text overlap with arXiv:1407.0474 by other author

Secrecy Wireless Information and Power Transfer with MISO Beamforming

The dual use of radio signals for simultaneous wireless information and power transfer (SWIPT) has recently drawn significant attention. To meet the practical requirement that energy receivers (ERs) operate with significantly higher received power as compared to information receivers (IRs), ERs need to be deployed in more proximity to the transmitter than IRs. However, due to the broadcast nature of wireless channels, one critical issue arises that the messages sent to IRs can be eavesdropped by ERs, which possess better channels from the transmitter. In this paper, we address this new secrecy communication problem in a multiuser multiple-input single-output (MISO) SWIPT system where one multi-antenna transmitter sends information and energy simultaneously to an IR and multiple ERs, each with one single antenna. To optimally design transmit beamforming vectors and their power allocation, two problems are investigated with different aims: the first problem maximizes the secrecy rate for IR subject to individual harvested energy constraints of ERs, while the second problem maximizes the weighted sum-energy transferred to ERs subject to a secrecy rate constraint for IR. We solve these two non-convex problems optimally by reformulating each of them into a two-stage problem. First, by fixing the signal-to-interference-plus-noise ratio (SINR) target for ERs (for the first problem) or IR (for the second problem), we obtain the optimal beamforming and power allocation solution by applying the technique of semidefinite relaxation (SDR). Then, the original problems are solved by a one-dimension search over the optimal SINR target for ERs or IR. Furthermore, for each of the two studied problems, suboptimal solutions of lower complexity are also proposed in which the information and energy beamforming vectors are separately designed with their power allocation.Comment: accepted by IEEE Transactions on Signal Processing. Longer version of arXiv:1306.096