2018/03/19 by Bruno Clerckx, Clerckx, Bruno, Rui Zhang +9 · 7 citations
Engineering · #Energy Harvesting in Wireless Networks #Antenna Design and Analysis #Wireless Power Transfer Systems
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.1803.07123
Radio waves carry both energy and information simultaneously. Nevertheless,\nRadio-Frequency (RF) transmission of these quantities have traditionally been\ntreated separately. Currently, we are experiencing a paradigm shift in wireless\nnetwork design, namely unifying wireless transmission of information and power\nso as to make the best use of the RF spectrum and radiations as well as the\nnetwork infrastructure for the dual purpose of communicating and energizing. In\nthis paper, we review and discuss recent progress on laying the foundations of\nthe envisioned dual purpose networks by establishing a signal theory and design\nfor Wireless Information and Power Transmission (WIPT) and identifying the\nfundamental tradeoff between conveying information and power wirelessly. We\nstart with an overview of WIPT challenges and technologies, namely Simultaneous\nWireless Information and Power Transfer (SWIPT),Wirelessly Powered\nCommunication Network (WPCN), and Wirelessly Powered Backscatter Communication\n(WPBC). We then characterize energy harvesters and show how WIPT signal and\nsystem designs crucially revolve around the underlying energy harvester model.\nTo that end, we highlight three different energy harvester models, namely one\nlinear model and two nonlinear models, and show how WIPT designs differ for\neach of them in single-user and multi-user deployments. Topics discussed\ninclude rate-energy region characterization, transmitter and receiver\narchitecture, waveform design, modulation, beamforming and input distribution\noptimizations, resource allocation, and RF spectrum use. We discuss and check\nthe validity of the different energy harvester models and the resulting signal\ntheory and design based on circuit simulations, prototyping and\nexperimentation. We also point out numerous directions that are promising for\nfuture research.\n