Multi-Antenna Wireless Powered Communication With Energy Beamforming

In Internet of Things (IoT) systems, a number of sensor devices monitor the physical system states and exchange information with each other. The main limitation is that the IoT devices are generally energy constrained since those are powered with batteries. To address this energy problem, we consider a cooperative wireless-powered communication network (WPCN), which consists of three phases: 1) downlink (DL) energy transfer from a multi-antenna access point (AP); 2) data sharing among IoT devices; and 3) uplink (UL) information transfer from single-antenna IoT devices. Based on the shared data and the harvested energy, the single-antenna IoT devices in the neighborhood cooperate to form a virtual antenna array in order to transmit their information simultaneously to the multi-antenna AP using a multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) technique in the UL information transfer phase. In this study, the transmit covariance matrices (i.e., beamforming vectors and the corresponding transmit power allocation) used for both DL energy transfer and UL information transfer are jointly designed to maximize the UL capacity based on the Lagrangian method. Furthermore, the time allocation for each phase is optimized based on a stochastic gradient method. In the numerical results, it is shown that our proposed beamforming scheme and the stochastic time allocation can achieve near-optimal performance.

In this paper, the buffer-constrained throughput performance of a multi-user wireless-powered communication (WPC) system is investigated, where energy harvesting follows a non-linear model. The investigation focuses on the buffer overflow performance of sending data in the downlink (DL) from the access point (AP) node to each user equipment (UE) node and that in the uplink from each UE node to the AP node, based on which the throughput performance on both directions when a buffer constraint is enforced is studied. Specifically, the buffer overflow probability at each node is analyzed, based on which the buffer-constrained throughput is studied. In addition, to ensure the throughput performance under the buffer constraint, the DL transmission power allocation policy and the required energy storage capacity at each UE are investigated. Also, the optimal channel time allocation policy is studied with the objective of maximizing the minimum buffer-constrained throughput guaranteed to each UE at the same time. To this aim, an optimization problem is first formulated and then a dichotomy-based time allocation algorithm combined with a one-dimensional search is proposed to solve this problem. The analysis and results, explicitly relating the throughput to the buffer constraint in addition to WPC characteristics, shed new light on the design and performance analysis of WPC systems.

This paper considers a single-antenna wireless- powered communication network (WPCN) over a flat- fading channel. We show that, by using our probabilistic harvest-and-transmit (PHAT) strategy, which requires the knowledge of instantaneous full channel state information (CSI) and fading probability distribution, the ergodic throughput of this system may be greatly increased relative to that achieved by the harvest-then- transmit (HTT) protocol. To do so, instead of dividing every frame to the uplink (UL) and downlink (DL), the channel is allocated to the UL wireless information transmission (WIT) and DL wireless power transfer (WPT) based on the estimated channel power gain. In other words, based on the fading probability distribution, we will derive some thresholds that determine the association of a frame to the DL WPT or UL WIT. More specifically, if the channel gain falls below or goes over these thresholds, the channel will be allocated to WPT or WIT. Simulation results verify the performance of our proposed scheme.

In this paper, we consider deploying an intelligent reflecting surface (IRS) to enhance the downlink (DL) energy transfer and uplink (UL) information transmission efficiency for secure multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) wireless powered communication networks (WPCNs). We aim to maximize the secrecy throughput of all users by jointly optimizing the DL/UL time allocation, the energy transmit covariance matrix of hybrid access point (AP), the information transmit beamforming matrix of users and the phase shifts of IRS in DL/UL, subject to constraints of energy/information transmit power at the hybrid AP/users and that of unit-modulus IRS phase shifts for DL/UL. To tackle the non-convex problem, we first transform the original problem into an equivalent form based on the mean-square error (MSE) method given time allocation, and then apply the alternating algorithm to update the optimization variables iteratively. Specifically, the energy covariance matrix and the information beamforming matrix are obtained based on the dual subgradient method. For the IRS phase shifts, we investigate two IRS beamforming reflection setups, namely different DL/UL IRS beamforming and identical DL/UL IRS beamforming. For the former case, the second-order cone programming technique and the Majorization-Minimization algorithm/element by element iterative algorithm are applied to obtain the DL and UL IRS phase shifts, respectively. For the latter case, the IRS phase shifts are obtained by the successive convex approximation technique. To further reduce the computational complexity of the single-user system, we derive the closed-form solutions of IRS phase shifts in each iteration for the two different reflection setups. Simulation results show that all the proposed algorithms can greatly improve the secrecy throughput compared to the conventional system without IRS.

In this paper, we consider wireless powered communication networks (WPCNs) where multiple users harvest energy from a dedicated power station and then communicate with an information receiving station in a time-division manner. Thereby, our goal is to maximize the weighted sum of the user energy efficiencies (WSUEEs). In contrast to the existing system-centric approaches, the choice of the weights provides flexibility for balancing the individual user EEs via joint time allocation and power control. We first investigate the WSUEE maximization problem without the quality of service constraints. Closed-form expressions for the WSUEE as well as the optimal time allocation and power control are derived. Based on this result, we characterize the EE tradeoff between the users in the WPCN. Subsequently, we study the WSUEE maximization problem in a generalized WPCN where each user is equipped with an initial amount of energy and also has a minimum throughput requirement. By exploiting the sum-of-ratios structure of the objective function, we transform the resulting non-convex optimization problem into a two-layer subtractive-form optimization problem, which leads to an efficient approach for obtaining the optimal solution. The simulation results verify our theoretical findings and demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed approach.

We consider the “harvest-then-transmit” protocol in a wireless powered communication network (WPCN), where an energy-constrained access point (AP) harvests energy from the radio-frequency signals transmitted by a power beacon (PB) for assisting user data transmission. In the wireless information transfer (WIT) phase, AP employs the harvested energy to convey independent signals to multiple users through either time-division multiple access (TDMA) or orthogonal frequency-division multiple access (OFDMA). Aiming to maximize the sum rate (SR) of the WPCN, we jointly optimize the energy harvesting (EH) time and the AP power allocation, considering both the conventional linear and practical nonlinear EH models at the AP. The optimization problems of both TDMA- and OFDMA-enabled WPCNs are formulated as nonconvex programs, which are challenging to solve globally. To achieve an efficient optimal solution to the problem of TDMA-enabled WPCN, we first decompose the original nonconvex problem into three convex subproblems, and then propose a low-complexity iterative algorithm for its solution. For the OFDMA-enabled WPCN, the problem belongs to a difficult class of mixed-integer nonconvex programming due to the involvement of binary variables for subcarrier allocation. To overcome this issue, we convert the problem to a quasi-convex problem and then employ a bisection search to obtain the optimal solution. Simulation results are provided to confirm the benefit of jointly optimizing the EH time and the AP power allocation compared to baseline schemes. The performance of the proposed TDMA-enabled WPCN is shown to be superior to that of the proposed OFDMA-enabled WPCN in terms of SR when the transmit power of PB and the number of antennas of AP are relatively large.

This paper investigates the joint time and power allocation in a multi-cell wireless powered communication network (WPCN) with successive interference cancellation. In the WPCN, the hybrid access points broadcast wireless energy to all users and then the users utilize the harvested energy to transmit information simultaneously in a spectrum-sharing fashion. The max-min fairness throughput optimization and max-sum throughput optimization problems are formulated to analyze the system performance. However, both of the two optimization problems are nonconvex due to the complicated co-channel interference and the coupled time and power variables. To deal with this challenge, efficient two-stage approaches are proposed to transform them into more tractable ones. Specifically, for the max-min fairness throughput optimization problem, we first convert the power allocation problem into geometric programming (GP) problem for given time allocation and then optimize the time allocation. For the max-sum throughput optimization problem, we first transform the power allocation problem into a signomial programming problem with fixed time allocation, which is further approximated as a GP one. Then, time allocation is optimized. The simulation results validate the effectiveness of the two proposed approaches. In addition, it is shown that the “doubly near-far” issue can be well addressed by the max-min fairness throughput optimization.

In this paper, the delay and delay-constrained throughput performance of a point-to-point wireless-powered communication system is investigated. In this system, the wireless-powered node, e.g., a user equipment (UE), receives data at the same time when powered from the other node, e.g., an access point (AP), and uses the harvested wireless energy to send data to the other node. The investigation focuses on the delay performance of sending data in the downlink (DL) from the AP node to the UE node and that in the uplink (UL) from the UE node to the AP node, based on which the throughput performance on both directions when delay constraints are enforced is also studied. To this aim, the cumulative service capacity of the service process is first analyzed for both DL and UL, taking into consideration the delay caused by the nontransmission phase for the AP or UE in each charging cycle. Thereafter, a general upper bound on the delay distribution for stochastic traffic arrivals is obtained for both DL and UL, based on which the delay-constrained throughput performance is further studied. In addition, to ensure the delay performance, the required energy storage capacity and wireless charging rate are investigated. The obtained results are exemplified with two specific traffic types, and the accuracy of the analysis is validated by comparison with extensive simulation results. The analysis and results shed new light on the performance of wireless-powered communication systems.

In this paper, we study a wireless powered communication network (WPCN) subject to the co-channel interference. In the down-link (DL), the hybrid access point (H-AP) broadcasts the wireless energy offered by the radio frequency (RF) signal to the user and relay. In the up-link (UL), the user and relay nodes transmit information to the H-AP through time-division-multiple-access (TDMA). In contrast to conventional WPCN, the interference can be considered as additional energy, not just as a threat for the data transmissions. Through the manner of curve fitting, we obtain the closed-form expression for the system outage probability and the throughput. Furthermore, the optimal time allocation to maximize the average system throughput is obtained. Finally it is shown that the theoretical results fit the simulation results closely and the proposed optimal scheme achieves the best performances.

Simultaneous wireless information and power transfer (SWIPT) has been advocated as a highly promising technology to provide near- <italic xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">perpetual</i> operation to low-powered wireless devices in Internet-of-Things (IoT)-based wireless networks. In this paper, a SWIPT-enhanced cell-free massive MIMO network is proposed. In such a network, a large set of spatially distributed access points (APs) interconnected via a central processing unit (CPU) can collaboratively serve a large number of both energy harvesting mobile stations (MSs) (requiring wireless energy transfer) and conventional MSs (not requiring wireless energy transfer) on the same time-frequency resources. We consider spatially correlated Rician fading channels and the use of different precoding schemes that are based on different channel estimators differing on the assumed knowledge of the line-of-sight component. Mathematically manageable expressions are derived for the harvested energy during the downlink (DL) energy harvesting phase and the <italic xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">achievable</i> spectral and energy efficiencies during the uplink (UL) payload transmission phase. A coupled UL/DL optimization problem is formulated aiming at finding the power control coefficients that maximize the minimum of the weighted achievable UL signal-to-interference-plus-noise ratios (SINRs) of all MSs. Extensive numerical results are presented that serve to highlight the existing trade-offs among the achievable spectral and energy efficiencies, the harvested energy, the energy dedicated to UL pilot transmission or the system configuration.

The increasing demand for data services has given rise to efficient utilization of available resources (e.g., energy) in modern wireless communication. In order to address the energy requirements a wireless powered communication network (WPCN) with separate energy source (ES) and access point (AP) is considered in this work. The transmitters here adopt harvest-then-transmit (HTT) protocol for transmission to AP. An optimal dynamic time allocation and scheduling policy is considered which maximizes the throughput of the system. The throughput maximization problem formulated is convex in nature and solved using convex optimization techniques. The fairness of proposed policy is compared with max-min policy which use harvest-or-transmit (HOT) protocol in terms of Jain's fairness index. Simulation results highlights the trade-off between throughput and fairness and show that the proposed policy is more reliable for the overcrowded scenario.

Wireless powered communication (WPC) is able to provide wireless devices (WDs) practically infinite energy by using the radio frequency energy harvesting technique. The electricity of WDs for the wireless information transmission (WIT) is converted from the received electromagnetic signals of wireless energy transfer (WET). Power beacon (PB) is usually deployed as the dedicated energy source in WPC networks and the performance of WET is sensitive to the path-loss effect. Thus, both WET and WIT are significantly influenced by the locations of the PBs. To enable efficient transmission in WPC, this paper analytically investigates the impact of the PB deployment strategies on the WPC performance when WDs are clustered around the access points (APs). Specifically, we propose the PB deployment strategy based on the truncated Poisson cluster process (PCP) model. The distribution of PBs is correlated to the locations of WDs by choosing APs as their common parent points. Then, we derive the semi-closed form expressions for the energy outage probability and the transmission success probability. We further present the expressions of the meta distributions of WET and WIT, and investigate the proportion of the WDs in one cluster that achieves successful transmission while satisfying the reliability constraint. Moreover, the distance distribution between the WD and the intra-cluster PBs is analytically derived for the proposed correlated PCP model. By comparing the performance with other deployment strategies, it is shown that the preference of the PB deployment strategy depends on the PB density. The analytical and numerical results can provide insightful guidelines for designing practical WPC systems.

The Third Generation Partnership Project (3GPP) has been studying dynamic allocation of sub-frames to uplink (UL) or downlink (DL) in Time Division Duplex (TDD), called ‘Dynamic TDD,’ since the Long Term Evolution (LTE) Rel. 11 timeframe. At the same time, 3GPP is also standardizing Enhanced Local Area (eLA) small-cell heterogeneous architectures for inclusion in LTE-B (LTE Rel. 12) as a solution offering high data rate to user terminals (UEs) along with high system capacity through spatial reuse of spectrum. In this paper, we focus on a particular eLA architecture proposed by DOCOMO, called the Phantom Cell architecture, that has the option to support dynamic TDD. For an arbitrarily-located UE in an eLA cell network, we apply results from stochastic geometry to derive expressions for the distribution of DL signal to interference plus noise ratio (SINR) at an arbitrary UE and the distribution of UL SINR at its serving eLA base station (BS). We use these results to study aspects of eLA cell system design, and the sensitivity of SINR to the extent of coordination across eLA cells employing dynamic TDD.

This paper studies an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV)-enabled wireless powered communication network (WPCN), in which a UAV is dispatched as a mobile access point (AP) to serve a set of ground users periodically. The UAV employs the radio frequency (RF) wireless power transfer (WPT) to charge the users in the downlink, and the users use the harvested RF energy to send independent information to the UAV in the uplink. Unlike the conventional WPCN with fixed APs, the UAV-enabled WPCN can exploit the mobility of the UAV via trajectory design, jointly with the wireless resource allocation optimization, to maximize the system throughput. In particular, we aim to maximize the uplink common (minimum) throughput among all ground users over a finite UAV's flight period, subject to its maximum speed constraint and the users' energy neutrality constraints. The resulted problem is nonconvex and thus difficult to be solved optimally. To tackle this challenge, we first consider an ideal case without the UAV's maximum speed constraint, and obtain the optimal solution to the relaxed problem. The optimal solution shows that the UAV should successively hover above a finite number of ground locations for downlink WPT, as well as above each of the ground users for uplink communication. Next, we consider the general problem with the UAV's maximum speed constraint. Based on the above multilocation-hovering solution, we first propose an efficient successive hover-and-fly trajectory design, jointly with the downlink and uplink wireless resource allocation, and then propose a locally optimal solution by applying the techniques of alternating optimization and successive convex programming (SCP). Numerical results show that the proposed UAV-enabled WPCN achieves significant throughput gains over the conventional WPCN with fixed-location AP.

A green cognitive Wireless Powered Communication Network (WPCN) is studied in this paper, which uses nonlinear energy harvesting technology and serves as a liner network for the main peer-to-peer communication pathway. The network is composed of a Hybrid Access Point (HAP), which transmits wireless power to a set of energy-efficient wireless devices (WDs) and also gathers sensory messages from them. In order to address the issue of user unfairness in cognitive WPCN, this paper proposes a cluster collaboration scheme where a single WD is designated as the Cluster Head (CH), tasked with relaying messages from the other WDs within the cluster. In addition, nonlinear energy harvesting technology and energy beam forming technology are used equalize the varying energy usage among WDs with the aim of enhancing the system’s fairness. Taking into account the implementation of energy beamforming and cluster collaboration strategy may cause interference to the main system, this paper optimizes the data transmission efficiency of the primary system under interference temperature constraints (ITC). The simulation outcomes indicate that in contrast to existing methods, the proposed approach is capable of markedly enhancing the fairness of data transmission rates and spectral efficiency of cognitive WPCN while ensuring the performance of the main system, especially under strict ITC.