ISAC Meets SWIPT: Multi-Functional Wireless Systems Integrating Sensing, Communication, and Powering

In this paper, we investigate the simultaneous wireless information and power transfer (SWIPT) in a multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) amplify-and-forward relay communication system, where the relay is an energy harvesting (EH) node and harvests the energy the signals transmitted from the source. The harvested energy is partially used to forward signals from the source to the destination, and the remaining energy is stored for other usages. The SWIPT in relay-assisted communication is interesting as long as the relay stores energy from the source and the destination receives successfully the data from the source. In this context, we propose to investigate the source and relay precoders that characterize the relationship between the achievable stored energy at the relay and the achievable source-to-destination rate, namely, the rate-stored energy (R-E) tradeoff region. First, we consider the ideal scheme, where there is the simultaneous operation of the EH and information decoding (ID) receivers at the relay. Then, we consider practical schemes, such as the power splitting and the time switching that separate the operation of EH and ID receivers over power domain or time domain, respectively. Moreover, we study the case of imperfect channel state information at the relay and the destination, and characterize its impact on the achievable R-E region. Through the simulation results, we show the effect of the position of the relay and the channel uncertainty on the achievable R-E regions of all the schemes when the used energy at the relay is constant or variable. We also show that, although it provides an outer bound on the achievable rate-energy region in one-hop MIMO systems, the ideal scheme provides only an upper bound on the maximum achievable end-to-end rate and not an outer bound on the R-E region.

The low efficiency of far-field wireless power transfer (WPT) limits the fundamental rate-energy (R-E) performance trade-off of the simultaneous wireless information and power transfer (SWIPT) system. To address this challenge, we propose in this letter a new SWIPT system aided by the emerging intelligent reflecting surface (IRS) technology. By leveraging massive low-cost passive elements that are able to reflect the signals with adjustable phase shifts, IRS achieve a high passive beamforming gain, which is appealing for drastically enhancing the WPT efficiency and thereby the R-E trade-off of SWIPT systems. We consider an IRS being deployed to assist a multi-antenna access point (AP) to serve multiple information decoding receivers (IDRs) and energy harvesting receivers (EHRs). We aim to maximize the weighted sum-power received by EHRs via jointly optimizing the transmit precoders at the AP and reflect phase shifts at the IRS, subject to the individual signal-to-interference-plus-noise ratio (SINR) constraints for IDRs. Since this problem is non-convex, we propose efficient algorithms to obtain suboptimal solutions for it. In particular, we prove that it is sufficient to send information signals only at the AP to serve both IDRs and EHRs regardless of their channel realizations. Moreover, simulation results show significant performance gains achieved by our proposed designs over benchmark schemes.

In this letter, we study the resource allocation for a multiuser intelligent reflecting surface (IRS)-aided simultaneous wireless information and power transfer (SWIPT) system. Specifically, a multi-antenna base station (BS) transmits energy and information signals simultaneously to multiple energy harvesting receivers (EHRs) and information decoding receivers (IDRs) assisted by an IRS. Under this setup, we introduce a multi-objective optimization (MOOP) framework to investigate the fundamental trade-off between the data sum-rate maximization and the total harvested energy maximization, by jointly optimizing the energy/information beamforming vectors at the BS and the phase shifts at the IRS. This MOOP problem is first converted to a single-objective optimization problem (SOOP) via the ε-constraint method and then solved by majorization minimization (MM) and inner approximation (IA) techniques. Simulation results unveil a non-trivial trade-off between the considered competing objectives, as well as the superior performance of the proposed scheme as compared to various baseline schemes.

This paper studies the robust beamforming design for simultaneous wireless information and power transfer (SWIPT)-enabled networks, where the rate-splitting (RS) scheme and the power-splitting (PS) energy harvesting (EH) receiver are adopted for secure information transfer and EH, respectively. In order to explore the worst-case energy efficiency (EE) performance limit of the system, an EE maximization problem is formulated with the elliptically bounded channel state information error model under the constraints of the quality of service (QoS) requirements of information decoding users, the EH requirements of EH users and the power budget at the transmitter. To tackle the formulated non-convex problem, a sequential minimal optimization-based algorithm is first proposed to construct a mapping table and the optimal PS ratios of the PS EH receiver are found by searching the table. Then, a dual-layer iterative algorithm is designed to obtain the maximal EE based on the Dinkelbach’s method in the inner loop and the successive convex approximation method in the outer loop. To accelerate the convergence of the outer loop, an efficient initialization algorithm is also designed. Simulation results show that the RS scheme contributes to the EE enhancement, and the PS EH receiver enlarges the rate-energy region restricted by the non-linear EH circuit. Moreover, traditional sum-rate maximization design and power minimization design may induce a notable worst-case EE performance loss at the high-power region and the low-QoS requirement region, respectively.

This letter characterizes the performance of maximum ratio transmission (MRT) in ad hoc networks with simultaneous wireless information and power transfer (SWIPT). We assume that the transmitters are equipped with multiple antennas and use MRT, while the typical receiver is equipped with a single antenna and an energy harvesting receiver using time switching (TS) or power splitting (PS) receiver architectures. First, using stochastic geometry and considering the signal-to-interference plus noise ratio, we derive the exact outage probability at the reference receiver in closed-form. Simulation results confirm the accuracy of the derived analytical expressions. Then, we use the delay-tolerant throughput and delay-limited throughput, which are related to the outage probability, as metrics to study the system performance. The results show that for the delay-limited throughput, PS outperforms TS at low rate or at high energy harvesting ratio, respectively. For delay-tolerant throughput, PS always outperforms TS for any energy harvesting ratio.

In this letter, we consider a multiple-input-multiple-output (MIMO) downlink system with simultaneous wireless information and power transfer (SWIPT), where the information sent to the desired receiver (DR) may be wiretapped by the malicious energy harvesting (EH) receivers (potential eavesdroppers). Assuming the channel state information (CSI) of the EH receivers is not perfectly known at the transmitter, we aim to maximize the worst-case secrecy rate by jointly designing the precoding matrix, AN covariance matrix and power splitting ratio, under the constraints of total transmit power and harvested energy at receivers. The formulated problem is non-convex and semi-infinite, which is hard to tackle. To solve it, we first deal with the non-convexity caused by CSI errors with the aid of the S-Procedure, and then employ the Taylor series approximation techniques to transfer the nonconvex problem into a convex optimization problem. Based on that, we propose an iterative algorithm with proved convergence to solve the original problem. Simulation results are finally provided to show the effectiveness of our proposed robust transmit design.

This paper considers simultaneous wireless information and power transfer (SWIPT) in a multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) wiretap channel with energy harvesting receivers. The main objective is to keep the probability of the legitimate user's achievable secrecy rate outage as well as the energy receivers' harvested energy outage as caused by CSI uncertainties below given thresholds. This probabilistic-constrained secrecy rate maximization problem presents a significant analytical and computational challenge since any closed-form for the probabilistic constraints with log-det functions is intractable. In this paper, we address this challenging issue using convex restrictions. In particular, we derive decomposition-based large deviation inequalities to transform the probabilistic constraints into second-order cone (SOC) constraints which are easier to handle. Then we show that a robust safe solution can be obtained through solving two convex sub-problems in an alternating fashion.

Simultaneous wireless information and power transfer (SWIPT) has emerged as a viable technique to energize and connect low-power autonomous devices and enable future Internet of Things (IoT). A major challenge of SWIPT is the energy consumption of the receiver of such low-power devices. An attractive low-power solution consists of an integrated information decoder (ID) and energy harvester (EH) architecture for SWIPT receiver (IntRx) where the received radiofrequency (RF) signal is first rectified before being used for information decoding. Such architecture eliminates the need for energy-consuming RF components, such as local oscillators and mixers. This article proposes a novel modulation and demodulation method for the IntRx SWIPT architecture based on pulse position modulation (PPM) where information is encoded in the position of the pulse. The new method transmits high amplitude pulses to increase the peak-to-average power ratio (PAPR) of the transmit signal and exploits the EH's nonlinearity so as to boost the harvested dc power. Simultaneously, the information can be decoded from the rectifier signal by simply finding the position of the pulse in a certain symbol duration. We have analyzed both the information and the power transfer performance of the newly proposed PPM for IntRx SWIPT theoretically, numerically, and experimentally. To that end, we have established a SWIPT system testbed in an indoor environment by prototyping a base station to transfer information-power signal and the IntRx SWIPT receiver, including ID and EH blocks. The performance evaluation of the PPM was carried out in various conditions, and the results have been compared and contrasted to conventional signals. Theoretical, numerical, and experimental results highlight the significant benefits of the proposed PPM scheme to enhance the power transfer performance and operate information decoding with low-power consumption.

In this paper, we provide a comprehensive literature survey on simultaneous wireless information and power transfer (SWIPT) in multi-antenna systems. We first review recent contributions on the theory analysis of SWIPT from information theoretic standpoint and introduce the tradeoff between information transfer and power transfer under various settings. Then, we focus on the utilization of multi-antenna techniques to solve existing problems of SWIPT. Contributions on the implementation aspects of multi-antenna SWIPT are summarized. The performance of SWIPT is evaluated by different metrics, therefore, we review the works on dynamic SWIPT optimization based on objective function using multi-antenna techniques. In addition, the implementation of SWIPT brings up secure issue. Thus, we summarize recent works on secure SWIPT. Finally, we present researches combining SWIPT with state-of-the-art techniques due to potential application in different scenarios.

In 5G wireless networks, the system capacity and the number of users will be significantly increased. However, the energy consumed for the communication will also be increased, which results in low system energy efficiency. Simultaneous wireless information and power transfer (SWIPT) can enable the user to perform energy harvesting from the radio-frequency signals parallel with the information decoding, which can effectively improve the system energy efficiency. In this paper, we study the energy efficiency optimization problem for the orthogonal frequency-division multiplexing-based 5G wireless networks with SWIPT, in which the subcarrier and power allocation are jointly optimized to maximize the system energy efficiency for single user and multiple user cases. For those two cases, through mathematical transforming, we use the Dinkelbach iterative method and the Lagrange dual method to solve the non-convex energy efficiency optimization problem. Simulation results show that compared with other algorithms, our proposed algorithm can achieve higher energy efficiency.

This paper presents a ASK modulation based modeling of Simultaneous Wireless Information and Power Transfer (SWIPT) system in LabVIEW. It supports in designing of SWIPT based system which able to harvest RF energy along with transfer of information simultaneously. At the receiver end, both RF energy harvesting (EH) and information decoding (ID) paths are modeled. RF energy harvesting path consists of RF rectifier and low pass filter. While ID path contains RF envelope detector and ASK demodulator. For the simulation verification of SWIPT system, a 2-ASK modulated RF signal is used at 900MHz. This modeling provides flexible parameters selection for the simulation of SWIPT system which helps in understanding and development of SWIPT system.

The main challenges of sensing in harsh industrial and biological environments are the limited energy of sensor nodes and the difficulty of charging sensor nodes. Simultaneous wireless information and power transfer (SWIPT) is a non-invasive option to replenish energy. SWIPT harvests energy and decodes information from the same RF signal, which is influencing the design of a wireless sensor network. In multi-hop multi-flow wireless sensor networks, interference generally exists, and the interference has a different influence on SWIPT. Route, interference and SWIPT are dependent. However, existing works consider SWIPT link resource allocation with a given route or only select path for one flow without interference. Therefore, this paper firstly analyzes the influence of interference on SWIPT, and select the SWIPT routing with interference. We design an interference-based information and energy allocation model to maximize the link capacity with SWIPT. Then, we design an interference-aware route metric, formulate SWIPT routing problem, and design an interference-aware SWIPT routing algorithm. The simulation results show that as the number of flows increases, there is more likely to obtain performance gains from interference and SWIPT.

In this paper, we study the distributed precoding problem for simultaneous wireless information and power transfer (SWIPT) in decode-and-forward (DF)-based multiple-input–multiple-output (MIMO) relay networks. The system model considered here consists of a source, a relay, an information decoding (ID) receiver, and an energy harvesting (EH) receiver, all mounted with multiple antennas. Since full channel state information (CSI) is usually unavailable, a practical scenario, where only local CSI is required, is considered in this paper. Such a practical scenario naturally constitutes a noncooperative game, where the source and the relay can be regarded as two rational game players. With properly designed utilities, it can be further shown that the existence and uniqueness of the pure-strategy Nash equilibrium (NE) of the proposed game can both be guaranteed under some mild conditions. Therefore, a distributed iterative precoding algorithm can be developed based on the best-response dynamic to obtain the unique NE solution for the proposed game. Moreover, a proximal-point-based regularization approach is also pursued to ensure the convergence of the proposed algorithm without requiring special restrictions on the channel ranks. Numerical simulations are also provided to demonstrate the proposed algorithm. Results show that our algorithm can converge quickly to a satisfactory solution with guaranteed convergence.

Coexisting radar and communication (CRC) systems on the same spectrum band have been recently recognized as a promising approach to solve the spectrum scarcity problem. Additionally, with the new requirements of achieving higher energy efficiency and restoring the consumed power, an initiative has been exploited to embed both information and energy within the same signal. Motivated by that, this paper presents a unified model to implement the concept of simultaneous wireless information and power transfer (SWIPT) in the coexistence environment between radar and communication systems. Specifically, we propose a novel energy harvesting based CRC model (CRCEH), in which the signals transmitted from both the communication and radar transmitters are precoded towards their conventional targets, communication receiver and radar targets respectively, as well as to an energy harvesting receiver. This system is capable of solving the spectrum scarcity problem as well as supporting low power devices with their energy requirements from the energy harvested at the energy harvesting receiver. The design problem is formulated as maximizing the radar detection probability subject to communication capacity and energy harvesting constraints. However, directly processing the data from the radar receiver requires high computational complexity and hardware costs. In order to circumvent this issue, this paper also proposes to deploy lens antenna array (LNA) to CRCEH system to sharply direct the signals to the energy harvesting receiver together with their respective destinations. Since LNA is able to focus the signal power on a subset of antennas, we may only deal with the data from the selective antenna subset associated with the maximal power. Numerical results show that the proposed method is able to achieve improved performance in terms of radar detection under communication capacity constraints compared to the conventional approaches besides the great benefit of harvesting the energy to feed some limited energy devices.

In this letter, we propose a novel simultaneous wireless information and power transfer (SWIPT) scheme, namely the frequency-splitting (FS) SWIPT, which separates the power and data signals in the frequency domain. The proposed FS SWIPT scheme is advantageous in that it can maximize the efficiency of the high power amplifier (HPA) in the transmitter and reduce the harmonic distortion caused by the nonlinearity of the HPA. We design a receiver circuit for the FS SWIPT by using a circulator and filters. We analyze the FS and conventional power-splitting (PS) SWIPT schemes in consideration of the nonlinearity of the HPA. We show that the proposed FS SWIPT greatly outperforms the PS SWIPT in terms of the harvested power and signal-to-noise ratio (SNR).