34 research outputs found
Joint Uplink and Downlink Coverage Analysis of Cellular-based RF-powered IoT Network
Ambient radio frequency (RF) energy harvesting has emerged as a promising
solution for powering small devices and sensors in massive Internet of Things
(IoT) ecosystem due to its ubiquity and cost efficiency. In this paper, we
study joint uplink and downlink coverage of cellular-based ambient RF energy
harvesting IoT where the cellular network is assumed to be the only source of
RF energy. We consider a time division-based approach for power and information
transmission where each time-slot is partitioned into three sub-slots: (i)
charging sub-slot during which the cellular base stations (BSs) act as RF
chargers for the IoT devices, which then use the energy harvested in this
sub-slot for information transmission and/or reception during the remaining two
sub-slots, (ii) downlink sub-slot during which the IoT device receives
information from the associated BS, and (iii) uplink sub-slot during which the
IoT device transmits information to the associated BS. For this setup, we
characterize the joint coverage probability, which is the joint probability of
the events that the typical device harvests sufficient energy in the given time
slot and is under both uplink and downlink signal-to-interference-plus-noise
ratio (SINR) coverage with respect to its associated BS. This metric
significantly generalizes the prior art on energy harvesting communications,
which usually focused on downlink or uplink coverage separately. The key
technical challenge is in handling the correlation between the amount of energy
harvested in the charging sub-slot and the information signal quality (SINR) in
the downlink and uplink sub-slots. Dominant BS-based approach is developed to
derive tight approximation for this joint coverage probability. Several system
design insights including comparison with regularly powered IoT network and
throughput-optimal slot partitioning are also provided