IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON WIRELESS COMMUNICATIONS, VOL. 18, NO.
2, FEBRUARY 2019
Resource Allocation for Wireless-Powered IoT
Networks With Short Packet Communication
Jie Chen , Student Member, IEEE, Lin Zhang , Member, IEEE, Ying-Chang Liang , Fellow, IEEE,
Xin Kang , Member, IEEE, and Rui Zhang , Fellow, IEEE
Abstract— Internet-of-Things (IoT) is a promising technology
to connect massive machines and devices in the future commu-
nication networks. In this paper, we study a wireless-powered
IoT network (WPIN) with short packet communication (SPC),
in which a hybrid access point (HAP) first transmits power to
the IoT devices wirelessly, then the devices in turn transmit
their short data packets achieved by finite blocklength codes
to the HAP using the harvested energy. Different from the long
packet communication in conventional wireless network, SPC
suffers from transmission rate degradation and a significant
packet error rate. Thus, conventional resource allocation in the
existing literature based on Shannon capacity achieved by the
infinite blocklength codes is no longer optimal. In this paper,
to enhance the transmission efficiency and reliability, we first
define effective-throughput and effective-amount-of-information as
the performance metrics to balance the transmission rate and
the packet error rate, and then jointly optimize the transmission
time and packet error rate of each user to maximize the total
effective-throughput or minimize the total transmission time
subject to the users’ individual effective-amount-of-information
requirements. To overcome the non-convexity of the formulated
problems, we develop efficient algorithms to find high-quality
suboptimal solutions for them. The simulation results show that
the proposed algorithms can achieve similar performances as that
of the optimal solution via exhaustive search, and outperform the
benchmark schemes.
Index Terms— Effective-throughput, effective-amount-of-
information, Internet-of-Things, short packet communications,
wireless power transfer.
Manuscript received May 20, 2018; revised October 8, 2018; accepted
January 7, 2019. Date of publication January 23, 2019; date of current
version February 11, 2019. This work was supported in part by the
National Natural Science Foundation of China under Grant U1801261,
Grant 61571100, Grant 61628103, and Grant 61801101 and in part by the
National University of Singapore under Grant R-263-000-D12-114. This paper
was presented at the IEEE GLOBECOM Workshop 2018. The associate editor
coordinating the review of this paper and approving it for publication was D.
W. K. Ng. (Corresponding author: Ying-Chang Liang.)
J. Chen, L. Zhang, and X. Kang are with the National Key Laboratory
of Science and Technology on Communications, University of Electronic
Science and Technology of China, Chengdu 611731, China, and also with
the Center for Intelligent Networking and Communications, University of
Electronic Science and Technology of China, Chengdu 611731, China (e-mail:
chenjie.ay@gmail.com; linzhang1913@gmail.com; kang.xin@uestc.edu.cn).
Y.-C. Liang is with the Center for Intelligent Networking and Com-
munications, University of Electronic Science and Technology of China,
Chengdu 611731, China (e-mail: liangyc@ieee.org).
R. Zhang is with the Department of Electrical and Computer Engi-
neering, National University of Singapore, Singapore 119077 (e-mail:
elezhang@ece.nus.edu).
Color versions of one or more of the figures in this paper are available
online at http://ieeexplore.ieee.org.
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/TWC.2019.2893335
1536-1276 © 2019 IEEE. Personal use is permitted, but republication/redistribution requires IEEE permission.
See http://www.ieee.org/publications_standards/publications/rights/index.html for more information.
1447
I. I NTRODUCTION
A. Background and Motivation
I Nternet-of-Things (IoT) is a promising paradigm to support
massive wireless connections among machines/devices in
the next generation of communications and beyond [1]–[4].
Major applications of IoT include smart grid, intelligent
transportation, industrial automation, and so on. There are
however several challenges to deploy IoT network in practical
scenarios. One challenge is the energy supply to IoT devices.
In general, IoT devices are powered by batteries with lim-
ited energy, and it could be highly costly or impractical to
replace the batteries regularly, especially when the devices are
deployed in harsh environment or embedded in human bodies.
Recently, energy harvesting (EH) technologies have been
proposed for IoT devices to effectively prolong the lifetime
of batteries [5]. In general, there are two categories of
EH techniques, i.e., magnetic induction and radio frequency
based wireless power transfer (RF-WPT) [6]. Specifically,
magnetic induction is a near-field EH technology, and can only
transmit power within a short distance (typically few to tens
of millimeters). The RF-WPT is a far-field EH technology,
and can support a relatively long distance (typically several to
tens of meters) [7]. In practical IoT networks, the distance
among IoT devices and HAP are typically several to tens
of meters. Therefore, the far-field RF-WPT is preferable in
IoT networks.
Basically, there are two operation models for far-field
RF-WPT. The first one is simultaneous wireless information
and power transfer (SWIPT) [8]–[10], in which the infor-
mation and energy signals are transmitted from a hybrid
access point (HAP) to the users simultaneously. The other one
is wireless powered communication networks (WPCN) [11],
in which energy signals are transmitted from the HAP to
charge the users in the downlink and then information signals
are delivered from the users to the HAP in the uplink.
In particular, full-duplex radio was considered in [12] and [13]
for simultaneous wireless power transfer and information
reception at the HAP, and in [14] for simultaneous wire-
less information transfer and energy harvesting at the users.
Throughput maximization problem for WPCN was studied
in [11]–[13] by optimizing the transmit time for wireless
power transfer from the HAP and uplink data transmit time
from the users. Furthermore, the minimum (common) through-
put of users of multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) based
1448 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON WIRELESS COMMUNICATIONS, VOL. 18, NO. 2, FEBRUARY 2019
WPCN was studied in [7] and [15] by assuming perfect
and imperfect channel state information (CSI), respectively.
In addition, due to the hardware limitations of EH circuits,
the energy conversion efficiency is not linear in the received
power, thus the traditional linear EH model leads to a subop-
timal resource allocation scheme [16]. To address this issue,
a practical non-linear EH model is proposed for resource
allocation in SWIPT system [17] and WPCN system [18],
respectively.
The above studies adopt Shannon capacity as the perfor-
mance metric to evaluate the transmission rate or throughput,
which implicitly assume infinite blocklength transmissions.
However, due to the stringent latency requirement in IoT,
IoT networks are in general dominated by short packet commu-
nication (SPC) [19], [20], which uses finite blocklength codes
and adopts a small number of symbols in one transmission
frame. Therefore, conventional resource allocation based on
Shannon capacity achieved by infinite-length packets is not
optimal for IoT network design. In fact, the packet length
has a significant impact on the IoT network. In particular,
SPC suffers from a maximum achievable rate smaller than the
Shannon capacity, as well as a significant packet error rate,
even when the transmission rate is smaller than the channel
capacity. In other words, the designs in the existing literature
on WPCN cannot be directly used in IoT communications.
Therefore, it is important to take the packet length into
consideration in the IoT network design.
B. Related Work on SPC
To support low-latency communications, SPC has been
studied in the last few years [21]–[29]. In 2010, a closed-
form expression of the maximum achievable rate with
single-antenna SPC was approximately obtained from an
information-theoretic perspective in [21]. Then, the results
in [21] were extended in various SPC scenarios. In particular,
parallel additive white Gaussian noise (AWGN) channels
were considered in [22], and a modified water-filling power
allocation scheme was proposed to maximize the lower bound
of the sum rate. In addition, the maximum achievable rate
of multiple-antenna SPC was studied in [23], which analyzed
the tradeoff between the reliability, throughput, and latency
in Rayleigh block-fading channels. Then, a constellation and
channel coding rate selection problem was studied in adaptive
modulation and coding for MIMO systems [24], where a new
selecting rule was proposed to achieve the maximal coding
rate. Besides, a resource allocation for downlink multi-user
scenario was studied in [25], where a multi-objective optimiza-
tion problem was formulated to balance the maximum sum
rate and the minimum error probability. Also, a scheduling
problem in a multi-user SPC network was investigated in [26],
where an energy-efficient scheduling algorithm was developed.
In addition, an energy-latency tradeoff problem with latency
constraint was studied in [27], where a dynamic programming
algorithm was developed. As for SPC without channel state
information (CSI), a packet efficiency maximization by opti-
mizing the training overhead was studied in [28] and [29].
Recently, the study on SPC-enabled RF-WPT has received
increasing attention [30]–[35]. Specifically, an achievable
channel coding rate for a noiseless binary communication
channel with EH transmitter was characterized in [30], and
then the results were extended to both AWGN channels
and discrete memoryless channels in [31]. Next, the out-
age probability and throughput of WPCN were analyzed
in [32] and [33], in which the analytical and numerical
results were applied to investigate the interplay between the
time allocation between energy and information transmis-
sions, the packet error probability, and the power ratio. Then,
an approximation expression was derived in [34] to charac-
terize the performance of error probability and latency under
quasi-static Nakagami-m fading. Besides, a cooperative system
under quasi-static Rayleigh fading was considered in [35] and
the error probability was derived under perfect/imperfect CSI.
C. Main Contributions
As aforementioned, SPC suffers from a low transmis-
sion rate and a significant packet error rate compared to
the conventional long-packet communication, which assumes
an infinite blocklength. The differences between this paper
and the existing works, i.e., [7]–[18], [21]–[35], are mainly
two-fold. On one hand, [7]–[18] consider the conventional
long-packet communication and adopt Shannon capacity as
the performance metric to design the resource allocation in
a RF-WPT IoT network. However, IoT networks are in general
dominated by SPC, and thus the resource allocation schemes
in [7]–[18] are suboptimal in IoT networks. On the other
hand, [21]–[35] consider the transmission rate and the packet
error rate separately, and thus the algorithms therein are
suboptimal to balance the transmission rate and the packet
error rate. Different from [7]–[18], [21]–[35], we study the
resource allocation in a wireless-powered IoT network (WPIN)
with SPC, and define effective-throughput and effective-
amount-of-information as the performance metrics to balance
the transmission rate and packet error rate.
The main contents of this paper are summarized as follows:
• We formulate a total effective-throughput maximization
problem with both the transmission time (equivalently,
packet length) and packet error rate of each user as
variables. Unfortunately, this optimization problem is
non-convex due to the following two reasons. First,
the optimization problem has an integer requirement on
the packet length, thus making the problem as a mixed-
integer programming, which is a non-convex problem
and difficult to solve in general. Second, the objective
function is not jointly concave with respect to the packet
length and packet error rate of each user. Thus, it may
cause intractable complexity to obtain the optimal solu-
tion. Instead, we develop an efficient algorithm based
on the principles of the block coordinate descent (BCD)
[36], [37] and concave-convex procedure (CCCP) [38] to
solve the problem sub-optimally in an iterative manner.
Besides, we provide the convergence and complexity
analysis of the proposed algorithm.
• We formulate a total transmission time (equivalently,
the total packet length) minimization problem with both
the transmission time and packet error rate of each
user as variables. In particular, we consider a minimum
CHEN et al.: RESOURCE ALLOCATION FOR WPINs WITH SPC
Fig. 1. WPIN with SPC: (a) System model; (b) Block structure.
effective-amount-of-information constraint for each user
to guarantee its quality of service. However, this opti-
mization problem is also non-convex and difficult to be
solved optimally. Again, we develop an efficient iterative
algorithm based on the principles of the BCD and CCCP
to solve the problem sub-optimally. In addiction, we also
provide the convergence and complexity analysis of the
proposed algorithm.
• Although the proposed algorithms are based on BCD and
CCCP, there are three main differences, i.e., 1) it is not
straightforward to apply BCD or CCCP to our formulated
problems directly, 2) we have modified and combined the
two algorithms to jointly solve the formulated problems,
3) we obtain the optimal semi-closed/colsed form solution
in each iteration of BCD and CCCP and we theoretically
prove the convergence. Besides, simulations show that
the proposed algorithms can achieve similar performances
as that of the optimal solution via exhaustive search
(which, however, requires a prohibitive complexity as the
number of users becomes large.), and also outperform the
benchmark schemes.
The rest of this paper is organized as follows. Section II
presents the system model of WPIN. Section III studies the
total effective-throughput maximization problem. Section IV
investigates the total transmission time minimization problem.
Section V provides simulation results to validate the effective-
ness of the proposed algorithms. Finally, Section VI concludes
the paper.
II. S YSTEM M ODEL
We consider a wireless-powered IoT network (WPIN) with
SPC shown in Fig. 1(a), which consists of a single-antenna
HAP and K single-antenna users, namely, U1 , U2 , · · · , UK .
Specifically, the HAP broadcasts an RF signal to charge these
users wirelessly, which can be regarded as downlink WPT
phase, and then these users send short data packets to the HAP
using the harvested energy via a TDMA scheme, which can be
regarded as uplink wireless information transfer (WIT) phase.
In the following, we provide the channel model, assumption
discussion and transmission model, respectively.
A. Channel Model
We assume quasi-static fading channels in the considered
system, i.e., the coefficient of each channel remains constant
within each block and varies independently among different
blocks. The block structure is given in Fig. 1(b), which is
1449
divided into two stages, i.e., Stage I and Stage II. In Stage I,
each user estimates CSI by using the pilots transmitted by the
HAP, and feeds it back to the HAP. Then, the HAP carries out
the optimization of the resource allocation and broadcasts the
resource allocation scheme to all users. Stage II is composed
of multiple frames with an equal length duration and each
frame is divided into two successive phases, i.e., downlink
WPT phase and uplink WIT phase.
B. Assumption Discussion
In the studied systems, we have three main assumptions.
Firstly, it is clear that estimating the CSI at users and feeding
the estimated CSI back to the HAP consume the energy at
users. Similar to [39] and [40], we assume that each user
has a dedicated battery, which does not rely on the harvested
energy and is only used to power basic functionalities, e.g.,
CSI estimation and exchange. Secondly, we assume perfect
CSI at the HAP [11], [39]–[41]. With this assumption, we can
obtain the optimal resource allocation and the corresponding
performance limit, both of which can be used to shed light
on the system design for a practical WPIN. Thirdly, since the
locations of the HAP and the users are usually fixed in an IoT
scenario, the channel coherence time (the length of one block)
is relatively large [41]. In other words, the length of Stage I
is negligible compared to the length of the whole block [41].
Thus, we will ignore the impact of the overhead in Stage I on
the system performance and focus on the resource allocation
scheme design in Stage II.
C. Transmission Model
1) Downlink WPT: Let s0 be the downlink signal with unit
power from the HAP to the users. Then, the received signal yk
at the k-th user Uk is

yk = PH gk s0 + uk , (1)
where PH is the transmit power of the HAP, gk and uk are the
channel gain between the HAP and user Uk , and the AWGN
at user Uk , respectively.
Due to hardware limitations of EH circuits, the energy
conversion efficiency is non-linear. Hence, we adopt a non-
linear RF EH model to capture the non-linearity of practical
EH circuit [16]. Specifically, if we denote τ0 as the trans-
mission duration of the downlink power transfer and ignore
the low noise power, the harvested energy at user Uk can be
1450 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON WIRELESS COMMUNICATIONS, VOL. 18, NO. 2, FEBRUARY 2019

T
expressed as and  = [1 , 2 , · · · , K ] . Define the transmitted effective-
amount-of-information1 of user Uk in nats as
Mk
1+exp(−k (gk PH −jk )) − M k Ωk
Ek =
1 − Ωk
τ0 , fk = nk qk (1 − k ) = (1 − k )[ck (n) − ωk (n)Q−1 (k )]. (7)
1
Ωk = , (2)
1 + exp (k jk ) III. T OTAL E FFECTIVE -T HROUGHPUT M AXIMIZATION
where the constant parameters Mk , k and jk , 1 ≤ k ≤ K, In this section, we jointly optimize the transmission time
can jointly characterize the various non-linear behaviour of (equivalently, packet length) and packet error rate of each
EH models accurately [16]. user for maximizing the total effective-throughput of all users.
2) Uplink WIT: If we denote τk as the duration of the uplink In particular, we first provide the problem formulation and
signal from user Uk , the transmit power of user Uk in the analysis. Then, we provide efficient algorithms to solve this
uplink phase is Pk = Ek /τk . Then, the received signal at the problem sub-optimally.
HAP from user Uk is

xk = Pk gk sk + vk , (3) A. Problem Formulation and Analysis

where sk is the uplink signal with unit power from user Uk 1) Problem Formulation: For the scenario that all
to the HAP and vk is the AWGN at the HAP with zero mean IoT devices are regarded as an integrated transceiver system,
and power σ 2 . Accordingly, the signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) of (e.g., each user does not need to transmit information in
the uplink signal from user Uk to the HAP can be expressed each block and the HAP only focuses on the amount of
as information transmitted by this system.), we aim to jointly
  optimize the packet length and the packet error rate of each
Mk user for maximizing the total effective-throughput of all users
1+exp(−ak (gk PH −bk )) − Mk Ωk gk τ0 αk τ0
γk = = , (4) in each short-length frame. Mathematically, according to (6),
(1 − Ωk ) σ τk
2 τk we formulate the optimization problem as
where αk = [ 1+exp(−aMkk(ggkk PH −bk )) − Mk Ωk gk ]/[(1 − Ωk )σ 2 ]. K
(P1) : max R (n, ) = rk (8a)
For notational simplicity, we denote τk = nk ts n, k=1
(0 ≤ k ≤ K), where ts is the symbol period of both downlink K
and uplink signals, and nk is the packet length (the number s.t. nk ≤ N , (8b)
k=0
of transmitted symbols) of the downlink/uplink signal sk .
According to [21], for a given packet error rate k and a nk ∈ N, 0 ≤ k ≤ K, (8c)
given packet length nk , the transmission rate in nats/second
(sec)/Hertz (Hz) of user Uk can be approximated as 0 < k ≤ max,k , 1 ≤ k ≤ K, (8d)
   where N denotes the non-negative integer set. In particular,
αk n0 Vk −1
qk ≈ ln 1 + − Q (k ) , (5) (8b) is the maximum latency constraint (length of a frame),
nk nk
(8c) means that the number of symbols should be a non-
where Q−1  (x) is negative integer, and (8d) specifies the maximum tolerable
∞ 1  the inverse function of Q (x) = packet error rate for each user. Note that rk = 0 when
t2
x
√ exp − 2 dt, and Vk denotes the channel disper-
2π nk = 0, which guarantees the non-negative value of rk in
sion, i.e., Vk = 1 − 1/(1 + αnk kn0 )2 . the optimization.
Different from the long packet transmission in the conven- 2) Problem Analysis: To solve (P1), we first analyze the
tional wireless network, SPC suffers from a non-zero packet properties of the constraints in the following lemma.
error rate, even when the transmission rate is smaller than the Lemma 1: i The optimal n∗ should satisfy constraint (8b)
channel capacity. In this paper, we take both the transmission K
with equality, i.e., k=0 n∗k = N .
rate and the packet error rate into consideration and define the Proof: Please refer to Appendix A.
effective-throughput in nats/sec/Hz from user Uk to the HAP Note that, (P1) is a mixed-integer programming problem,
as which is generally a non-convex problem. Thus, it may cause
nk intractable complexity to obtain the globally optimal solution.
rk = qk (1 − k ) In this paper, we will solve (P1) with at least a local optimum
N 
(1 − k )nk αk n0 Vk −1 in two steps. In the first step, we relax (P1) to a continuous
= [ln(1 + )− Q (k )] variable optimization problem by replacing constraint (8c)
N nk nk
1 − k

= ck (n) − ωk (n)Q−1 (k ) , (6) 1 Note that the effective-amount-of-information (nats) is a metric to char-
N acterize the amount of information that has been successfully transmitted,
while the effective-throughput (nats/sec/Hz) is a metric to characterize the
where N is defined as the overall
√ length of a frame, ck (n) = effective-amount-of-information that can be transmitted in a unit time and
T
nk ln(1 + αnk nk 0 ), ωk (n) = nk Vk , n = [n0 , n1 , · · · , nK ] , spectral resource.
CHEN et al.: RESOURCE ALLOCATION FOR WPINs WITH SPC 1451

with nk ≥ 0, 0 ≤ k ≤ K, i.e., where ‡k is the root of the equation Θ (k ) = 0, in which
Θ (k ) is given by
(P2) : max R (n, )
n, √ Q−1 (k )2
K Θ(k ) = 2πωk (n) exp( )(1 − k )
s.t. nk = N, (9) 2
k=0
nk ≥ 0, 0 ≤ k ≤ K, (10) + ωk (n)Q−1 (k ) − ck (n). (12)
(8d). Proof: Please refer to Appendix C.

In the second step, we perform an integer conversion and

update the solution of (P2) to meet constraint (8c).
In fact, (P2) is also a non-convex problem. To solve it
efficiently, a BCD algorithm will be developed to obtain
a suboptimal solution in an iterative manner. Specifically,
we first decouple (P2) into two subproblems as
(P2−a) : max R (n, ) s.t. (8d),
C. The Solution of (P2−b)
In this part, we provide a (locally) optimal solution of
(P2−b). Firstly, we analyze the concavities of ck (n) and
ωk (n) in the following lemma.
Lemma 4: Both ck (n) and ωk (n) are concave with respect
to n.
Proof: Please refer to Appendix D.
 K 1−k
According to Lemma 4, both k=1 N ck (n) and
and K (1−k )Q (k )
−1

k=1 N ω k (n) are concave functions with respect

(P2−b) : max R (n, ) s.t. (9), (10), to n. Then, for a given , the objective function R(n, ) =
n K
where (P2−a) is an optimization subproblem of  for a
given n, and (P2−b) is an optimization subproblem of n
for a given . Then, we iteratively solve (P2−a) and (P2−b)
as follows:
• In the first iteration, by adopting an initial n, we solve
(P2−a) and obtain the optimal  as (1) . Then, by adopt-
ing  = (1) , we solve (P2−b) and obtain the (locally)
optimal n as n(1) .
• In the t-th (t > 1) iteration, by adopting n = n
(t−1)
,
we solve (P2−a) and update the optimal  as  . Then,
(t)
by adopting  = (t) , we solve (P2−b) and update n
as n(t) .
The iterative procedure will stop until R (n, ) converges.
In the subsequent parts, we will first develop algorithms
to obtain the globally/locally optimal solutions of (P2−a)
and (P2−b), respectively. Then, we provide the convergence
and complexity analysis of the proposed algorithm. Finally,
we perform an integer conversion and update the solution of
(P2) to meet constraint (8c).
B. The Optimal Solution of (P2−a)
In this subsection, we provide the optimal solution of
(P2−a). To begin with, we analyze the concavity of the
objective function in the following lemma.
Lemma 2: For a given n, R (n, ) is a concave function
with respect to .
Proof: Please refer to Appendix B.
Meanwhile, constraint (8d) is an affine set. Thus, (P2−a)
is a convex optimization problem. By analytically solving
(P2−a), we obtain the optimal solution in the following
theorem.
Theorem 3: The optimal solution † for problem (P2−a)
is given by
R (n, ) ≥
† max,k , for Θ(max,k ) ≥ 0,
k = ‡ (11)
k , otherwise,
K 1−k K (1−k )Q−1 (k )
k=1 rk = k=1 N ck (n) − k=1 N ωk (n) is
the difference of two concave functions and is a non-concave
function with respect to n in general. In other words, (P2−b)
is a non-convex optimization problem and it is hard to find
the optimal solution.
In fact, (P2−b) belongs to a class of difference of convex
(DC) problem [38], in which the objective is to minimize
the difference of two convex functions and the constraint
is a convex set. Thus, we develop a CCCP algorithm to
solve it approximately in an iterative manner. The basic idea
of the CCCP algorithm is to iteratively approximate a DC
problem as a convex problem with the first-order Taylor series
expansion and solve the approximated convex problem until
the convergence. In the following, we provide the details of
the CCCP algorithm.
To begin with, we denote n0 as an initial n and denote
T
ni = [ni,0 , ni,1 , ., ni,K ] (i ≥ 1) as the optimized n in the
i-th iteration. Then, in the i-th iteration, the first-order Taylor
series expansion of ωk (n) around ni−1 can be expressed as
ωk (n)
= ωk (ni−1 ) + ∇(ωk (ni−1 ))(n − ni−1 )
1
+ (n − ni−1 )T ∇2 (ωk (nf ))(n − ni−1 )
2
(a)
≤ ωk (ni−1 ) + ∇(ωk (ni−1 ))(n − ni−1 )  ωk (n; ni−1 ),
(13)
where nf is a point between n and ni−1 , ∇2 (ωk (nf )) is the
Hessian matrix of ωk (n) at n = nf , and (a) is due to the con-
cavity of ωk (n), i.e., ∇2 (ωk (nf )) ≤ 0, and ∇ (ωk (ni−1 ))
is the gradient of ωk (n) at n = ni−1 , i.e., ∇ (ωk (ni−1 )) =

∂ωk (n)  T
∂n n=ni−1 = [∇ωk,0 , ∇ωk,1 , ., ∇ωk,K ] .
By substituting (13) into the function R (n, ), we can
obtain the lower bound of R (n, ) as
K 1 −  k
ck (n) − ωk (n; ni−1 )Q−1 (k )
k=1 N
Δ
= Rlb (n, ; ni−1 ) . (14)
1452 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON WIRELESS COMMUNICATIONS, VOL. 18, NO. 2, FEBRUARY 2019

Note that, ck (n) is a concave function with respect to n and Algorithm 1 BCD-CCCP Algorithm for Total Effective-
ωk (n; ni−1 ) is a linear function with respect to n. Thus, Throughput Maximization
the lower bound Rlb (n, ; ni−1 ) is concave with respect]
1: Initialize n = n(0) , t = 1.
to n.
2: repeat
Next, we optimize n to maximize the lower bound 3: Set n = n(t−1) and calculate (t) based on (11),
Rlb (n, ; ni−1 ) instead of maximizing R (n, ) directly.
4: Set  = (t) , n0 = n(t−1) , i = 1,
In particular, the lower bound maximization problem can be
5: repeat
formulated as 6: Given ni , calculate ni+1 based on (15), and i ← i + 1,
(P2−c) : max Rlb (n, ; ni−1 ) s.t. (9), (10), 7: until n converges,
n
8: n(t) = ni∗ and t ← t + 1, 
in which Rlb (n, ; ni−1 ) is a concave function with respect 9: until Γ = R(n(t) , (t) ) − R(n(t−1) , (t−1) )/R(n(t) , (t))
to n, while both (9) and (10) are affine sets with respect to n. converges.
Thus, (P2−c) is a convex optimization problem. By analyt-
ically solving (P2−c), we obtain the optimal solution in the
following theorem. By combining (17) with (18), we obtain
Theorem 5: The optimal solution n† for (P2−c) is given
by Rlb (ni+1 , (t) ; ni ) ≥ Rlb (ni , (t) ; ni−1 ), ∀ t, (19)
⎧
⎪
⎪ N which guarantees the convergence of the CCCP algorithm in
⎪
⎨ K z † + 1 , for k = 0, each iteration of the BCD algorithm.
n†k = k=1 k
(15)
⎪
⎪ α k n†0 Next, we prove the convergence of the BCD algorithm. Note
⎪
⎩ † , for 1 ≤ k ≤ K, that, in the (t + 1)-th iteration of the BCD algorithm, (t+1)
zk maximizes R(n(t) , ) in (P2−a), i.e.,
 
where zk† = −1  − 1, W (·)
λ† N
W − exp − 1− −Q−1 (k )∇ωk,k −1 R(n(t) , (t+1) ) = max R(n(t) , ) ≥ R(n(t) , (t) ). (20)
k 
†
is the Lambert W-Function [12], and λ is the root of the
Then, we have
following equation (in terms of λ)
K   R(n(t+1) , (t+1) )
λN −1
αk (k −1)W −exp(− −Q (k )∇ωk,k − 1) (a) (b)
k=1 1−k = R(ni∗ , (t+1) ) ≥ Rlb (ni∗ , (t+1) ; ni∗ −1 )
K
− Q−1 (k )∇ωk,0 (1 − k ) − λN = 0. (16) (c)
k=1 ≥ Rlb (n1 , (t+1) ; n0 )
Proof: Please refer to Appendix E. (d) (e)
≥ Rlb (n0 , (t+1) ; n0 ) = R(n0 , (t+1) )
(f) (g)
D. Convergence and Complexity Analysis = R(n(t) , (t+1) ) ≥ R(n(t) , (t) ), (21)
1) Convergence Analysis: In this part, we analyze the where in (a) we use n(t+1) = ni∗ in the (t + 1)-th iteration of
convergence of the proposed BCD-CCCP algorithm. To begin the BCD algorithm in Algorithm 1, in (b) and (e) we use (18),
with, we summarize the proposed algorithm in Algorithm 1 in (c) we use (19), in (d) we use (17), in (f) we use n0 = n(t)
with a double loop structure, i.e., the inner loop is from in the (t+1)-th iteration of the BCD algorithm in Algorithm 1,
step 5 to step 7 and the outer loop is from step 2 to and in (g) we use (20).
step 9. In particular, the inner loop is the iteration of the    
Thus, we have R n(t+1) , (t+1) ≥ R n(t) , (t) , which
CCCP algorithm to solve (P2−b), and the outer loop is the guarantees the convergence.
iteration of BCD algorithm to solve (P2).
 In the following, 2) Complexity Analysis: In this part, we analyze the com-
we will prove R n(t+1) , (t+1) ≥ R n(t) , (t) , where t is plexity of Algorithm 1, which is mainly composed of an inner
the iteration index of the BCD algorithm, which guarantees loop (i.e., CCCP algorithm) and an outer loop (i.e., BCD
the convergence of Algorithm 1. algorithm). The computational complexities of both inner loop
Since there is a CCCP algorithm in each iteration of the and outer loop are dominated by solving a non-linear equation.
BCD algorithm, we will first prove the convergence of the According to [42], the non-linear equation can be efficiently
CCCP algorithm in the t-th iteration of the BCD algorithm. solved by Newton’s method. Denote λn and λ as the gaps
Recall that, ni+1 is the optimal solution of (P2−c) in the between the initialized solutions and the exact solutions of
(i + 1)-th iteration of the CCCP algorithm. Then, we have solving the non-linear equations in the inner loop and the
 
Rlb (ni+1 , (t) ; ni ) = max Rlb (n, (t) ; ni ) outer loop respectively. Then, the computational complexities
n of solving the non-linear equations in the inner loop and the
≥ Rlb (ni , (t) ; ni ). (17) outer loop are O(
λn
) and O(
λ
), respectively, where

·
denotes Euclidean norm. If we denote Ic and Ib as the
Meanwhile, due to R (n, ) ≥ Rlb (n, ; ni ) from (14),
number of iterations for the inner loop and the outer loop
we have
respectively, the computational complexity of Algorithm 1
Rlb (ni , (t) ; ni ) = R(ni , (t) ) ≥ Rlb (ni , (t) ; ni−1 ). (18) can be expressed as O(Ic Ib
λn

λ
). In other words,
CHEN et al.: RESOURCE ALLOCATION FOR WPINs WITH SPC
Algorithm 1 can converge to a local optimum with a poly-
nomial time computational complexity.
E. Integer Conversion
If we denote († , n† ) as the solution of Algorithm 1, n† may
violate the integer requirement in the original problem (P1).
Thus, we need to convert n† to a feasible integer solution n∗
and re-calculate the optimal , i.e., ∗ , by substituting n =
n∗ into (P2−a). In the following, we focus on the integer
conversion and omit the re-calculation of the optimal .
In fact, the integer conversion problem belongs to a class
of combinatorial optimization problem. In other words, it may
cause intractable complexity to obtain the optimal solution.
Alternatively, we develop a heuristic algorithm for the integer
conversion and obtain a suboptimal solution. The key idea is as
follows: We can rewrite each element in n† as the summation
of an integer part and a fractional
 part, i.e., n†k = ak +bk , 0 ≤
k ≤ K, where ak = n†k is the integer part and bk = n†k −
 
1453
packet length and packet error rate to minimize the total
transmission time of users under the minimum effective-
amount-of-information requirement of each user. Mathemat-
ically, we formulate the optimization problem as
K
(P3) : min N (n, ) = nk
n, k=0
s.t. fk (n, k ) ≥ Dk , 1 ≤ k ≤ K,
(8c), (8d), (24)
where Dk is the minimum effective-amount-of-information
requirement of user Uk and (24) is the individual minimum
effective-amount-of-information constraint.
2) Problem Analysis: Clearly, (P3) is a mixed-integer pro-
gramming problem, which is a non-convex problem. Thus,
it may cause intractable computational complexity to obtain
the globally optimal solution. Instead, we adopt a method
similar to that in the previous section and solve (P3) sub-
optimally with two steps. In the first step, we relax (P3)
to a continuous variable optimization problem by replacing
n†k is the fractional part, and · denotes the integer floor constraint (8c) with (10), i.e.,
operation. Then, it is probable that the optimal integer solution K
is ak or ak + 1 for any k. Meanwhile, a large fractional part (P4) : min N (n, ) = nk s.t. (24), (10), (8d),
n, k=0
means a large chance that the optimal solution is ak + 1.
Specifically, we first initialize the integer solution as n∗k = and obtain the solution of (P4). In the second step, we perform
ak . Then, we sort bk , 0 ≤ k ≤ K, in a descending order. an integer conversion and update the solution of (P4) to satisfy
Without loss of generality, we assume b0 ≥ b1 · · · ≥ bK . constraint (8c) in (P3).
Finally, we update the integer solution as n∗k = ak + 1 for We notice that, the objective function in (P4) is regardless
K
0 ≤ k < k=0 bk . of  and only determined by n. A straightforward scheme
Therefore, the heuristic integer solution is to solve (P4) is an exhaustive search over n. Specifically,

K for a specific value of n satisfying (10), if there exists a 
∗ ak + 1, for 0 ≤ k < k=0 bk , satisfying both (8d) and (24), this value of n is feasible for
nk = (22)
ak , otherwise.
IV. T OTAL T RANSMISSION T IME M INIMIZATION
In this section, we consider that each user has a minimum
effective-amount-of-information requirement, and minimize
the total transmission time (equivalently, the total packet
length) to satisfy all users’ requirements by jointly optimizing
the transmission time and packet error rate of each user in each
frame. We first provide the problem formulation and analysis.
Then, we develop an efficient algorithm to solve this problem
sub-optimally.
A. Problem Formulation and Analysis
1) Problem Formulation: According to (7), the transmitted
effective-amount-of-information from user Uk can be rewritten
(P4). Then, the optimal n, i.e.,n† , should be the feasible n
yielding the minimum value of K k=0 nk . In fact, a feasible n
for (P4) can be alternatively stated as follows: For a specific
value of n satisfying (10), if the maximum value of fk (n, k ),
i.e., max fk (n, k ), is no smaller than Dk for any k, this
0<k ≤max
value of n is feasible for (P4).
It is worth noting that, for each feasible value of n, there
may exist multiple solutions of  satisfying both (8d) and (24).
Thus, there may exist multiple optimal solutions of  in (P4).
Nevertheless, we are interested in the optimal solution of
 maximizing the effective-amount-of-information fk (n, k )
for each k. Accordingly, the exhaustive search over n can
be modified as follows: for a specific value of n satisfy-
ing (10), we find the optimal  by solving max fk (n, k ).
0<k ≤max
If max fk (n, k ) is no smaller than Dk , this value of n is
0<k ≤max
as a function of n and k , i.e.,
fk (n, k ) = nk qk (1−k ) = (1 − k )[ck (n)−ωk (n)Q−1 (k )],
(23)
where ck (n) and ωk (n) are defined
 in the previous √ section,
i.e., ck (n) = nk ln 1 + αnk nk 0 and ωk (n) = nk Vk ,
1 ≤ k ≤ K.
For the scenario that all IoT devices are independent trans-
ceivers, (e.g.,the HAP requires to collect the information of
each receiver in each block), we aim to jointly optimize the
feasible for (P4). Then, the optimaln, i.e., n† , is the feasible
K
n yielding the minimum value of k=0 nk and the optimal
†
k , 1 ≤ k ≤ K, is k = arg max fk (n, k ).
0<k ≤max
To avoid intractable complexity of the exhaustive search
method, we develop a BCD algorithm to solve (P4) efficiently.
Specifically, we first decouple (P4) into two subproblems.
The first subproblem is to maximize fk (n, k ), 1 ≤ k ≤ K,
by optimizing k for a given n, i.e.,
(P4−a) : max fk (n, k ) s.t. (8d).
k
1454 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON WIRELESS COMMUNICATIONS, VOL. 18, NO. 2, FEBRUARY 2019

The second subproblem is to minimize N (n, ) by Algorithm 2 BCD-CCCP Algorithm for Total Transmission
designing n for a given , i.e., Time Minimization
(P4−b) : min N (n, ) s.t. (24), (10). 1: Initialize n = n(0) , t = 1.
n 2: repeat
Then, we iteratively solve (P4−a) and (P4−b) until N (n, ) 3: Set n = n(t−1) , calculate (t) based on (11),
converges to a global/local optimum. 4: Set  = (t) , set n0 = n(t−1) , i = 1,
In the following subsections, we will develop algorithms to 5: repeat
obtain the globally/locally optimal solutions of (P4−a) and 6: Given ni , calculate ni+1 based on (27), and i ← i + 1,
(P4−b), respectively. Then, we provide the convergence and 7: until n converges.
complexity analysis of the modified BCD algorithm in this 8: n(t) = ni∗ , and t ← t + 1,
case. Finally, we design an integer conversion and update the |N (n(t) ,(t) )−N (n(t−1) ,(t−1) )|
9: until Γ = N (n(t) ,(t) )
converges.
solution of (P4) to meet constraint (8c).

B. The Optimal Solution of (P4−a)

where n‡0 is the root of the following equation (in terms
In this part, we provide the optimal solution of (P4−a). of n0 )
According to Lemma 2, for a given n, the objective function
K αk
fk (n, k ) in (P4−a) is a concave function with respect 1+zk − Q−1 (k )∇ωk,0
zk = 1, (28)
to k . Besides, the constraint in (P4−a) is an affine set. k=1 ln (1 + zk ) − 1+zk − Q−1 (k )∇ωk,k
Thus, (P4−a) is a convex optimization problem. By applying
where zk is given by
the Lagrange duality to (P4−a), we can obtain the optimal
αk n0
solution, which is the same as the optimal solution of (P2−a), zk = −1 −
ϕk (n0 )
i.e., (11).  
ϕk (n0 ) ϕk (n0 )
×W − exp(∇ωk,k Q−1 (k ) − ) , (29)
C. The Solution of (P4−b) αk n0 αk n0
In this part, we provide a locally optimal solution of in which ϕk (n0 ) is defined as
(P4−b). Recall that, fk (n, k ) is a non-concave function with
ϕk (n0 ) = Q−1 (k ) [ωk (ni−1 ) + ∇ωk,0 (n0 − ni−1,0 )
respect to n. Thus, (P4−b) is a non-convex problem. Similar
Dk
to the previous section, we develop a CCCP algorithm to solve − ∇ωk,k ni−1,k ] + , (30)
(P4−b) in an iterative manner. 1 − k
To begin with, we denote n0 as an initial n and denote and zk† is obtained by substituting n†0 into (29).
ni (i ≥ 1) as the optimized n in the i-th iteration. Then, Proof: Please refer to Appendix F.
from (23), the first-order Taylor series expansion of ωk (n)
around ni−1 in the i-th iteration can be upper-bounded by
D. Convergence and Complexity Analysis
ωk (n; ni−1 ), which is linear with respect to n. Accordingly,
the transmitted effective-amount-of-information fk (n, ) can 1) Convergence Analysis: In this part, we analyze the
be lower-bounded as convergence of the proposed algorithm to solve problem (P4).

Firstly, we summarize the proposed algorithm in Algorithm 2
fk (n, k ) ≥ (1 − k ) ck (n) − ωk (n; ni−1 )Q−1 (k ) with a double loop structure, i.e., the inner loop is from
Δ step 5 to step 7 and the outer loop is from step 2 to step 9.
= fk,lb (n, k ; ni−1 ) , (25)
In particular, the inner loop is the iteration of the CCCP
where fk,lb (n, k ; ni−1 ) is concave with respect to n. algorithm to solve (P4−b) and the outer loop is the iteration
By replacing fk (n, k ) in (P4−b) with its lower bound of the BCD algorithm to solve (P4). In the following, we will
fk,lb (n, k ; ni−1 ) in (24), we formulate a new optimization prove N (n(t+1) , (t+1) ) ≤ N (n(t) , (t) ), which guarantees
problem as the convergence of Algorithm 2.
(P4−c) : min N (n, ) Since there is a CCCP algorithm in each iteration of the
n BCD algorithm, we will first prove the convergence of the
s.t. fk,lb (n, k ; ni−1 ) ≥ Dk , 1 ≤ k ≤ K, (26) CCCP algorithm in the t-th iteration of the BCD algorithm.
(10). In the i-th iteration of the CCCP algorithm, from
Appendix F, the optimal solution ni satisfies
Since fk,lb (n, k ; ni−1 ) is concave with respect to n, (P4−c)
(t)
is a convex optimization problem. By analytically solving fk,lb (ni , k ; ni−1 ) = Dk . (31)
(P4−c), the optimal solution is given in the following
theorem. By combining (31) and (25), we have
Theorem 6: The optimal solution of (P4−c) is (t) (t) (t)
fk,lb (ni , k ; ni ) = fk (ni , k ) ≥ fk,lb (ni , k ; ni−1 ) = Dk ,
⎧
‡
⎪
⎨n0 , for k = 0, (32)
†
nk = αk n‡0 (27) which means that ni is a feasible value of n in the (i + 1)-th
⎪
⎩ † , for 1 ≤ k ≤ K,
zk iteration of the CCCP algorithm.
CHEN et al.: RESOURCE ALLOCATION FOR WPINs WITH SPC 1455

 
Note that, ni+1 minimizes N n, (t) in the (i + 1)-th
iteration of the CCCP. Thus, we have
N (ni+1 , (t) ) ≤ N (ni , (t) ), ∀t, (33)
which guarantees the convergence of CCCP algorithm in the
each iteration of the BCD algorithm.
Meanwhile, we have
(a) (b)
N (n(t+1) , (t+1) ) = N (ni∗ , (t+1) ) ≤ N (n1 , (t+1) )
(c) (d)
≤ N (n(t) , (t+1) ) = N (n(t) , (t) ), (34)
where in (a) we use the fact that the CCCP algorithm con-
verges to the solution ni∗ in the (t + 1)-th iteration of the
BCD algorithm, i.e., n(t+1) = ni∗ , in (b) we use the conver-
gence of the CCCP algorithm, in (c) we use the fact that we
initialize n = n(t) in the CCCP algorithm in the (t + 1)-th
iteration of the BCD algorithm, and in (d) we use the fact that Fig. 2. Total effective-throughput versus the transmit power: K = 2,
N = 300, and dk = 12 m, 1 ≤ k ≤ K.
both N (n(t) , (t+1) ) and N (n(t) , (t) ) are independent of .
Therefore, we have N (n(t+1) , (t+1) ) ≤ N (n(t) , (t) ),
which guarantees the convergence. follows: Firstly, we design n∗k = ak +1, 1 ≤ k ≤ K; Secondly,
2) Complexity Analysis: In this part, we analyze the we substitute nk = n∗k in constraint (24) and obtain n∗0 , which
complexity of Algorithm 2, which is mainly composed of is the minimum integer satisfying (24).
an inner loop (i.e., CCCP algorithm) and an outer loop
(i.e., BCD algorithm). Similarly, the computational complexi- V. S IMULATION R ESULTS
ties of both inner loop and outer loop are dominated by solving In this section, we provide simulation results to evaluate
a non-linear equation, which can be expressed as O(
λn
) and the performance of the proposed algorithms. In particular,
O(
λ
), respectively. Then, the computational complexity of we assume that the noise power at the HAP is σ 2 =
Algorithm 2 can be expressed as O(Ic Ib
λn

λ
). In other −174 dBm/Hz and and the bandwidth is set as 1MHz [11].
words, Algorithm 2 can converge to a local optimum with a As for the parameters of the non-linear EH model in (2),
polynomial time computational complexity. we assume Mk = 24 mW, k = 0.0022, and jk = 1500,
1 ≤ k ≤ K [16]. Besides, we adopt a Rayleigh fading channel
E. Integer Conversion model as gk = 10−3 d−3k ρk , where dk is the distance between
If we denote († , n† ) as the solution of Algorithm 2, n† may the HAP and user Uk and ρk follows exponential distribution
violate the integer requirement in the original problem (P3). with unit mean. Note that the above channel model is assumed
Thus, we need to convert n† to satisfy integer constraint (8c) to have a 30 dB average signal power attenuation at a reference
in (P3). As aforementioned, the integer conversion problem distance of 1 meter (m) [11]. The transmit power of HAP
belongs to a class of combinatorial optimization problem, ranges form 5dbm to 15dbm based on 3GPP [43]. In addition,
and it may cause intractable computational complexity to each result is obtained by 104 Monte Carlo trials.
obtain the optimal solution. Thus, we develop a heuristic
algorithm and obtain a suboptimal solution. In particular, A. Total Effective-Throughput Maximization
the goal of the heuristic algorithm is to minimize the total In this subsection, we provide simulation results to evaluate
transmission time under the constraints in (P3), i.e., (8c), the performance of the proposed BCD-CCCP in Algorithm 1.
(8d), and (24). We notice that, it is easy to satisfy con- Two algorithms are also simulated for comparison. The first
straints (8c) and (8d). Thus, we only focus on constraint (24), one is the exhaustive search method, which is optimal but
i.e., fk (n, ) ≥ Dk , 1 ≤ k ≤ K. Recall that, fk (n, ) computationally prohibitive. The second one is the algo-
is a monotonically increasing function with respect to n0 . rithm designed for long packet communications in [11]. Note
Meanwhile, the monotonicity of fk (n, ) with respect to nk , that, [11] only invokes the transmission time allocation. For
1 ≤ k ≤ K, is unclear. Therefore, we intend to conservatively fair comparison, we provide the performance of the algo-
design n† , 1 ≤ k ≤ K to satisfy constraint (24) by adjusting rithm in [11] by adopting the time allocation therein and its
the value of n0 . corresponding optimal k , which can be obtained by solving
Specifically, we can rewrite each element in n† as the (P2−a) with the time allocation in [11]. Furthermore, since
summation of an integer part and a fractional
  part, i.e., n†k = the exhaustive search requires exponential computational com-
†
ak + bk , 1 ≤ k ≤ K, where ak = nk is the integer part plexity, we only show the performance of this method with
  small dimensions in some figures to validate the effectiveness
and bk = n†k − n†k is the fractional part. Then, it is probable
of the proposed algorithms.
that the optimal integer solution is ak or ak + 1 for any k. Fig. 2 shows the total effective-throughput versus the trans-
We conservatively design the suboptimal integer solution as mit power. In the figure, the total effective-throughput of
1456 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON WIRELESS COMMUNICATIONS, VOL. 18, NO. 2, FEBRUARY 2019

Fig. 4. Effect of the number of users on the total effective-throughput:

Fig. 3. Effect of the imperfect CSI on the total effective-throughput: K = 2, PH = 5 dBm, N = 1000, and dk = 12 m, 1 ≤ k ≤ K.
N = 300, max,k = 10−8 and dk = 12 m, 1 ≤ k ≤ K.

each scheme increases as the transmit power of the HAP

grows. This is due to the fact that, the harvested energy
at each user increases with the transmit power of the HAP.
A higher harvested energy at each user hence leads to a
higher transmit power of the uplink signal and contributes to
a higher effective-throughput. Besides, the performance of the
proposed algorithm almost overlaps with that of the optimal
exhaustive search, which validates the effectiveness of the
proposed algorithm. The reason can be explained intuitively as
following. Algorithm 1 is mainly based on BCD and CCCP.
From [36]–[38], we know BCD and CCCP are efficient
algorithms which can achieve (nearly) optimal solutions.
Besides, we obtain the optimal solution in each iteration of
BCD and CCCP, and we also have theoretically proved that
Algorithm 1 can find a local optimal solution at least. Hence, Fig. 5. Effect of the total packet length on the total effective-throughput:
it is reasonable that Algorithm 1 has such good performance. PH = 5 dBm, K = 2 and dk = 12 m, 1 ≤ k ≤ K.
In addition, the performance gap between the proposed algo-
rithm and the algorithm in [11] for time allocation increases The reason behind is that, a larger number of users is able
with a lower transmit power of the HAP or smaller maximum to provide a larger degree of freedom for system design and
packet error rate requirement. This is because taht a lower thus leads to a higher total effective-throughput. In addition,
transmit power of the HAP or smaller maximum packet the proposed algorithm outperforms the algorithm in [11] for
error rate requirement leads to a larger influence of the time allocation, especially for a large number of users. This
term of ωk (n)Q−1 (k ) on the time allocation. Furthermore, also validates the effectiveness of the proposed algorithm.
the metric of effective-throughput in this figure is bits/Hz/s, Fig. 5 shows the total effective-throughput versus the total
thus, the performance gap will become large if the time and packet length. Firstly, we observe that the total effective-
spectrum resource increase. throughput of the proposed algorithms increases with the
Fig. 3 shows the impact of imperfect CSI on the total total packet length. The reason is that the larger total packet
effective-throughput. In the figure, the channel gain with length can achieve higher maximum transmission rate in the
imperfect CSI is denoted as gk = 10−3 d−3 k ρ̂k , where ρ̂k =
proposed algorithms. This demonstrates that the packet length
|hk + Δhk |2 and hk ∼ CN (0, 1) and Δhk ∼ CN (0, κ) [44]. has significant impacts on IoT communications. In addition,
From Fig. 3, we observe that the proposed algorithm with the proposed algorithm outperforms the algorithm in [11],
imperfect CSI can achieve a performance similar to that of the especially when the total packet length is small.
optimal exhaustive search algorithm. Besides, the performance
of the prosed algorithm with imperfect CSI is better than the B. Total Transmission Time Minimization
performance of other suboptimal algorithms. This validates the In this subsection, we first define system availability as the
effectiveness of the proposed algorithm with imperfect CSI. probability that N (n∗ , ∗ ) is no larger than a packet length
Fig. 4 shows the total effective-throughput versus the num- threshold N , which is determined by the coherence time
ber of users. Firstly, we observe that the total effective- of channels. In particular, the total packet length threshold
throughput of each scheme increases with the number of users. N is small in fast fading channels and is large in slow
CHEN et al.: RESOURCE ALLOCATION FOR WPINs WITH SPC 1457

Fig. 6. Effect of the transmit powers on the system availability: K = 2, Fig. 7. Effect of the number of users on the system availability: PH =
max,k = 0.5, dk = 5 m and Dk = 100 bits, 1 ≤ k ≤ K. 15 dBm, max,k = 0.5, dk = 5 m and Dk = 100 bits, 1 ≤ k ≤ K.

fading channels. In other words, the system availability can

be interpreted as the probability that all the users can be
simultaneously served with the minimum effective-amount-
of-information within the coherence time of channels. For
performance comparison, we also provide the performances
of the optimal exhaustive search method and the suboptimal
fixed packet error rate method, in which the packet error rate
is fixed, i.e., k = 10−5 , 1 ≤ k ≤ K, and n is obtained by
solving (P4−b) for such given packet error rates.
Fig. 6 shows the system availability versus the total
packet length with different transmit powers. From the fig-
ure, we observe that the system availability increases as the
transmit power of the HAP grows. This is because, a higher
transmit power of the HAP leads to a higher transmit power
of each user, which generally boosts the effective-amount-
Fig. 8. Convergence performance versus the number of iterations: PH =
of-information of each user. Thus, a higher transmit power 15 dBm, max,k = 0.5, dk = 5 m, N = 1000 for (P1) and Dk = 100
of the HAP reduces the number of total packet length to bits for (P3), 1 ≤ k ≤ K.
satisfy the minimum effective-amount-of-information require-
ment. Besides, the system availability of the proposed algo- for total transmission time minimization. For convenience,
rithm overlaps with that of the optimal exhaustive search we define Γ as the normalized gap between the values
and outperforms the fixed packet error rate method. This of the objective function in two successive iterations in
indicates that, the proposed algorithm is able to minimize the Algorithm 1 or Algorithm 2. From Fig. 8, less number of
total packet length, revealing one advantage of the proposed users corresponds to a better convergence rate. This is because
algorithm. that less users imply less parameters to be optimized in the
Fig. 7 shows the system availability versus the total packet proposed algorithms and thus need less iterations. It is worth
length with different number of users. From the figure, noting that, only 2 or 3 iterations on average are needed for the
we observe that larger number of total packet length is convergence by adopting a reasonable convergence threshold,
required for larger number of users to achieve the same e.g., 10−4 . This result demonstrates the low-complexity of the
system availability; this is quite intuitive, as more wireless proposed algorithms.
resource is needed to satisfy more users, each of which
has a minimum effective-amount-of-information requirement. VI. C ONCLUSION
Also, we observe that the proposed algorithm outperforms that In this paper, we studied a wireless-powered IoT network
with the fixed packet error rate. This demonstrates that the with SPC, where a HAP first broadcasts RF signals to charge
optimizing packet error rate has a significant impact on the distributed users in a wireless manner and then the users
IoT network and validates the effectiveness of the proposed in turn transmit short data packets to the HAP. In particu-
algorithm. lar, we formulated a total effective-throughput maximization
Fig. 8 investigates impacts of the number of users on problem and a total transmission time minimization problem
the convergence performances of the proposed Algorithm 1 with both transmission time and packet error rate of each
for total effective-throughput maximization and Algorithm 2 user as variables. To overcome the non-convexity of the
1458 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON WIRELESS COMMUNICATIONS, VOL. 18, NO. 2, FEBRUARY 2019

K
formulated problems, we proposed BCD-CCCP algorithms value Δ satisfying n∗0 + Δ + k= n∗k = N . If we denote
to solve them efficiently in an iterative manner, and proved n‡ = [n∗0 + Δ,
 n
∗
· · , n∗K ] and ‡ = ∗ = [∗1 , · · · , ∗K ]. Then,
1, ·
their convergence. Simulation results showed that the proposed we have R n ,  > R (n∗ , ∗ ). This contradicts with the
‡ ‡

algorithms perform similarly to the optimal exhaustive search, assumption that n∗  and ∗ are the optimal solution of (P1).
and outperform the benchmark schemes. Therefore, we have K ∗
k=0 nk = N .

A PPENDIX A
A PPENDIX B
In this appendix, we prove the equality with two steps. In the
first step, we prove that the objective function R (n, ) is an To begin with, we calculate the second-order derivative of
increasing function with respect to n0 . In the second step, rk with respect to k , and obtain
we utilize the monotonicity of the objective function R (n, )
∂ 2 rk ωk (n) −1

and prove the equality. 2 = (Q (k )) (k − 1) + 2(Q−1 (k )) , (39)
∂k N
A. Monotonicity of R (n, ) With Respect to n0  −1  dQ−1 (k ) √
where Q (  k) = = − 2π exp
By taking the first-order derivative of R (n, ), we have  −1 2   dk
2 −1


1
2 Q (k ) , and Q−1 (k ) = d Qd2(k ) = 2πQ−1 (k )
K  2  k
∂R(n, ) 1  αk exp Q−1 (k ) , are the first-order and second-order
=
∂n0 N 1 + αnk kn0 derivatives of Q−1 (k ) with respect
k=1
   to k , respectively.
 Note
αk n3k Q−1 (k ) that, both Q−1 (k ) < 0 and Q−1 (k ) > 0 hold for
−  . (35) 2
k ∈ (0, 0.5). Then, it is easy to verify ∂∂r2k < 0. In other
(nk + αk n0 )2 α2k n20 nk + 2αk n0 n2k k
words, rk is a concave function with respect to k [45]. Thus,
αk n0 K
Meanwhile, due to rk ≥ 0, we have nk ln(1 + nk ) ≥ R (n, ) = k=1 rk is also concave with respect to .
√
α2k n20 nk +2αk n0 n2k −1
nk +αk n0 Q (k ), which means
nk (nk + αk n0 ) ln(1 + αnk kn0 ) A PPENDIX C
Q−1 (k ) ≤  . (36)
α2k n20 nk + 2αk n0 n2k In this appendix, we adopt the Lagrange duality to solve
(P2−a). Firstly, we write the Lagrangian
K function of (P2−a)
By substituting (36) into (35), we have
 as L (n, , ξ) = R (n, ) + k=1 ξk (max,k − k ), where
∂R(n, ) 1 K αk ξ = [ξ1 , · · · , ξK ]T is the non-negative dual variable. Accord-
≥
∂n0 N k=1 1 + αnk kn0 ing to the Karush-Kuhn-Tucker (KKT) conditions [45],
αk n0
 the optimal solution needs to satisfy
αk n4k ln(1 + nk )
− ∂L (n, , ξ)
(nk + αk n0 )(α2k n20 nk + 2αk n0 n2k ) = Θ (k )/N − ξk = 0, 1 ≤ k ≤ K, (40a)
  ∂k
1 K αk ln(1 + zk )
= 1− 2 , (37) ξk (max,k − k ) = 0, 1 ≤ k ≤ K, (40b)
N k=1 1 + zk zk + 2zk
where zk = αk n0 where Θ( k)
is the first-order derivative of R (n, ) with
 nk . To check whether N
K αk respect to k and Θ (k ) is given in (12).
k=1 1+zk 1 − ln(1+z
2 +2z
k)
in (37) is larger than zero or not,
zk k From (40a), we have ξk = Θ (k )/N ≥ 0. Recall that,
we define g(zk ) = zk2 + 2zk − ln (1 + zk ). By taking the R (n, ) is a concave function with respect to k . Then,
first-order derivative of g(zk ), we have the first-order derivative of R (n, ) with respect to k ,
2zk2 + 4zk + 1 i.e., Θ (k )/N , is a decreasing function with respect to k ,
g  (zk ) = , (38) i.e., +∞ = Θ (0)/N ≥ Θ (k )/N ≥ Θ (max,k )/N for
1 + zk
0 ≤ k ≤ max,k . If Θ (max,k )/N is larger than zero,
which is obviously no smaller than zero due to zk ≥ 0.
i.e., Θ (max,k )/N > 0, we have ξk = Θ (k )/N > 0.
In other words, g(zk ) is an increasing function and we have
By substituting ξk > 0 into (40b), we obtain the optimal
g(zk ) ≥ g(0) = 0. By substituting g(zk ) ≥ 0 into  (37),
 solution as ∗k = max,k . If Θ (max,k )/N is equal to zero,
∂R(n,) K αk ln(1+z )
we obtain ∂n0 ≥ N1 k=1 1+z 1 − z2 +2zk ≥ 0. i.e., Θ (max,k )/N = 0, it is easy to verify that the optimal
k ( k k)
Therefore, R (n, ) is increasing with respect to n0 . solution is ∗k = max,k . If Θ (max,k )/N is smaller than zero,
the optimal solution must satisfy 0 < ∗k < max,k from (40a).
By substituting 0 < ∗k < max,k into (40b), we obtain that
B. Proof of the Equality
the optimal ξk is zero, i.e., ξk∗ = 0. Then, we substitute
We denote n∗ = [n∗0 , n∗1 , · · · , n∗K ] and ∗ = [∗1 , · · · , ∗K ] ξk∗ = 0 into (40a) and obtain the optimal solution as the root
as the optimal solution of (P1), and denote R (n∗ , ∗ ) of Θ (k )/N = 0. Furthermore, since Θ (k )/N is a monotone
as the corresponding
 total effective-throughput. Meanwhile, decreasing function and +∞ = Θ (0)/N ≥ Θ (∗k )/N =
we assume K ∗
k=0 k < N . Since R (n, ) is an increasing
n 0 > Θ (max,k )/N , the optimal solution must be unique. This
function with respect to n0 , there exists a small positive completes the proof of Theorem 3.
CHEN et al.: RESOURCE ALLOCATION FOR WPINs WITH SPC 1459

A PPENDIX D By taking the first-order derivative of m (zk ), we have

dm(zk ) zk
According to the result in [11], ck (n) is concave with dzk = (1+z 2 > 0. In other words, m (zk ) is a monotoni-
k)
respect
√ to n. Next, we prove the concavity of ωk (n) = cally increasing function. Besides, m (0) is smaller than zero
nk Vk , 1 ≤ k ≤ K with respect to n by two steps. First, and m (∞) approaches to the infinity. Thus, it is easy to
we prove that nk Vk is a concave function with respect to n. verify that there is a unique zk to satisfy (43) for a given λ.
Second, we use the concavity of nk Vk to prove the concavity In particular, we can derive the zk satisfying (43) as
of ωk (n). For notation simplicity, we define hk (n) = nk Vk .
−1
1) Concavity of hk (n) With Respect to n: Firstly, we cal- zk =   − 1. (45)
λN
W − exp(− 1−k − Q−1 (k )∇ωk,k − 1)
culate the  matrix of hk (n) with respect to n as
 Hessian
2 2
Hk = ∂∂nhk∂n (n)
, 0 ≤ , j ≤ K, where ∂∂nhk∂n (n)
is the
j j By substituting (45) into (44), we obtain the equation (16).
element of Hk at the -th row and j-th column. In particular,
Then, we can obtain the optimal λ, i.e., λ† by calculating the
the diagonal entry of Hk , i.e.,  = j, is
⎧ root of the equation (16) in terms of λ. Note that since the
⎪
⎪ 6α2k nk value of zk is different for different values of λ due to the
⎪
⎪ − 2
4 n0 , for  = 0,
2
⎪
⎨ (nk + αk n0 ) monotonicity of m (zk ), if there are multiple solutions of λ
∂ hk (n)
= 6α2k nk (41) in (16), there will be multiple different values of zk and all
∂n ∂n ⎪
⎪ − 2
4 nk , for  = k, of them satisfy the KKT conditions (43) and (43). Then, there
⎪
⎪ (n k + α n
k 0 )
⎪
⎩0, are multiple optimal solutions to satisfy the KKT conditions,
otherwise,
which is contrary to the fact the optimal solution for the convex
and the off-diagonal entry of Hk , i.e.,  = j, is problem is unique. Hence, there is only one solution for this
⎧ equation. Accordingly, by substituting λ† into (45), we obtain
⎪
⎪ 6α2k nk
⎪
⎪
⎪ (n + α n )4 0 k
n n , for  = 0, j = k, the optimal zk , i.e., zk† .
∂ 2 hk (n) ⎨ k 2 k 0 Notethat, from Lemma 1, the optimal solution needs to
= 6αk nk (42) K
∂n ∂nj ⎪
⎪ 4 n0 nk , for  = k, j = 0, satisfy k=0 nk =N . Then, by substituting zk = zk† into nk =
⎪ K
⎪
⎪ (nk + αk n0 ) αk n0
and
⎩0, zk k=0 nk =N , we obtain the optimal solution as
otherwise. in (15).
T
For an arbitrary vector β = [β0 , · · · , βK ] , we have
6α2 n
β T Hk β = − (n +αk nk )4 (β0 n0 − βk nk )2 ≤ 0, which means A PPENDIX F
k k 0
Hk is negative semi-definite. Thus, hk (n) is concave with
In this appendix, we adopt the Lagrange duality
respect to n [45].
to solve (P4−c). Firstly, we write the Lagrangian
2) Concavity of ωk (n) With Respect to n: Since hk (n) is
function
K of
K (P4−c) as L (n, , λ; ni−1 ) =
concave with respect to n, for 0 ≤ θ ≤ 1, we have θhk (ñ) +
k=0 kn + λ
k=1 k (D k − f k,lb (n,  k ; ni−1 )), where
(1 − θ) hk (n̂, k ) ≤ hk (θñ + (1 − θ) n̂),
√ where ñ and n̂ are T
λ = [λ1 , · · · , λK ] is the non-negative dual variable.
two feasible values of n. Meanwhile, x is a concave  with
According to the KKT conditions, the optimal solution needs
respect
 to x. Then,  for 0 ≤ θ ≤ 1, we have θ h k (ñ) +
to satisfy
(1 − θ)hk (n̂) ≤ θhk (ñ) +  (1 − θ)h k (n̂). Bycombining
 above two inequations, θ hk (ñ) + (1 − θ) hk (n̂) ≤
the ∂L(n, , λ; ni−1 )
= 1 − (1 − k )λk m(zk ), 1 ≤ k ≤ K,
hk (θñ + (1 − θ)n̂), which is equivalent to θωk (ñ) + ∂nk
(1 − θ) ωk (n̂) ≤ ωk (θñ + (1 − θ) n̂). Thus, ωk (n) is con- (46)
cave with respect to n [45]. K
∂L(n, , λ; ni−1 ) αk
=1− (1 − k )λk [
A PPENDIX E ∂n0 1 + zk
k=1

In this appendix, we adopt the Lagrange duality to solve −Q−1 (k )∇ωk,0 ] = 0, (47)
(P2−c). Firstly, we write the Lagrangian function 
of (P2−c) λk (Dk − fk,lb (n, k ; ni−1 )) = 0, (48)
K
as L (n, , λ; ni−1 ) = Rlb (n, ; ni−1 ) + λ(N − k=0 nk ),
zk
where λ is the dual variable. From [45], the optimal solution where m(zk ) = ln(1 + zk ) − 1+z k
− Q−1 (k )∇ωk,k , zk =
αk n0
needs to satisfy KKT conditions, i.e., nk and fk,lb (n, k ; ni−1 ) is given in (25).
From (46), we have λk > 0. By combining λk > 0 with
∂L (n, , λ; ni−1 ) m(zk )(1 − k )
= − λ = 0, 1 ≤ k ≤ K, (48), we have Dk − fk,lb (n, k ; ni−1 ) = 0, which
can be
∂nk N
rewritten as αkzkn0 ln (1 + zk ) − ∇ωk,k Q−1 (k ) = ϕk (n0 ),
(43)
K   where ϕk (n0 ) is defined as in (30). Then, we have the
∂L (n, , λ; ni−1 )  1 − k αk relationship between zk and n0 as
−1
= − Q (k )∇ωk,0
∂n0
k=1
N 1 + zk 
αk n0 ϕk (n0 )
− λ = 0, (44) zk = −1 − W − exp(∇ωk,k Q−1 (k )
ϕk (n0 ) αk n0
zk −1 
where m(zk ) = ln(1 + zk ) − −Q (k )∇ωk,k and ϕk (n0 )
1+zk − ) , (49)
zk = αnk kn0 . αk n0
1460 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON WIRELESS COMMUNICATIONS, VOL. 18, NO. 2, FEBRUARY 2019
Meanwhile, from (46), we have
 −1
zk −1
λk (1 − k ) = ln(1 + zk ) − − Q (k )∇ωk,k . vol. 65, no. 5, pp. 1984–1999, May 2017.
1 + zk
(50)
By substituting zk in (49) and λk (1 − k ) in (50) into (47),
we have the equation (28) in terms of n0 . Then, we can
obtain the optimal n0 , i.e., n†0 by calculating the root of the
equation (28) in terms of n0 . Note that the problem is a
convex problem, there must be a unique value of variable n0
in the the equation (28) to satisfy the KKT conditions (46),
(47) and (48), simultaneously. Specifically, we can find the
roots of the equation (28) by numerical search, if the obtained
value satisfies the KKT conditions (46), (47) and (48), simul-
taneously, this is the unique optimal solution. Accordingly,
by substituting n†0 into (49), we can obtain the optimal zk ,
i.e., zk† . Finally, we substitute n0 = n†0 and zk = zk† into
zk = αnk kn0 , and obtain the optimal nk , 1 ≤ k ≤ K, i.e., n†k .
This completes the proof of Theorem 6.
R EFERENCES
[1] J. Gubbi, R. Buyya, S. Marusic, and M. Palaniswami, “Internet of Things
(IoT): A vision, architectural elements, and future directions,” Future
Gener. Comput. Syst., vol. 29, no. 7, pp. 1645–1660, Sep. 2013.
[2] L. Zhang, M. Xiao, G. Wu, M. Alam, Y.-C. Liang, and S. Li, “A survey
of advanced techniques for spectrum sharing in 5G networks,” IEEE
Wireless Commun., vol. 24, no. 5, pp. 44–51, Oct. 2017.
[3] L. Zhang, Y.-C. Liang, and M. Xiao, “Spectrum sharing for Internet
of Things: A survey,” IEEE Wireless Commun., to be published, doi:
10.1109/MWC.2018.1800259.
[4] L. Zhang, J. Liu, M. Xiao, G. Wu, Y.-C. Liang, and S. Li, “Performance
analysis and optimization in downlink NOMA systems with cooperative
full-duplex relaying,” IEEE J. Sel. Areas Commun., vol. 35, no. 10,
pp. 2398–2412, Oct. 2017.
[5] S. Bi, C. K. Ho, and R. Zhang, “Wireless powered communication:
Opportunities and challenges,” IEEE Commun. Mag., vol. 53, no. 4,
pp. 117–125, Apr. 2015.
[6] X. Lu, P. Wang, D. Niyato, D. I. Kim, and Z. Han, “Wireless networks
with RF energy harvesting: A contemporary survey,” IEEE Commun.
Surveys Tuts., vol. 17, no. 2, pp. 757–789, 2nd Quart., 2015.
[7] G. Yang, C. K. Ho, and Y. L. Guan, “Dynamic resource allocation for
multiple-antenna wireless power transfer,” IEEE Trans. Signal Process.,
vol. 62, no. 14, pp. 3565–3577, Jul. 2014.
[8] R. Zhang and C. K. Ho, “MIMO broadcasting for simultaneous wire-
less information and power transfer,” IEEE Trans. Wireless Commun.,
vol. 12, no. 5, pp. 1989–2001, May 2013.
[9] Q. Shi, L. Liu, W. Xu, and R. Zhang, “Joint transmit beamforming
and receive power splitting for MISO SWIPT systems,” IEEE Trans.
Wireless Commun., vol. 13, no. 6, pp. 3269–3280, Jun. 2014.
[10] J. Xu, L. Liu, and R. Zhang, “Multiuser MISO beamforming for
simultaneous wireless information and power transfer,” IEEE Trans.
Signal Process., vol. 62, no. 18, pp. 4798–4810, Sep. 2014.
[11] H. Ju and R. Zhang, “Throughput maximization in wireless powered
communication networks,” IEEE Trans. Wireless Commun., vol. 13,
no. 1, pp. 418–428, Jan. 2014.
[12] X. Kang, C. K. Ho, and S. Sun, “Full-duplex wireless-powered commu-
nication network with energy causality,” IEEE Trans. Wireless Commun.,
vol. 14, no. 10, pp. 5539–5551, Oct. 2015.
[13] H. Ju and R. Zhang, “Optimal resource allocation in full-duplex wireless-
powered communication network,” IEEE Trans. Commun., vol. 62,
no. 10, pp. 3528–3540, Oct. 2014.
[14] Y. Zeng and R. Zhang, “Full-duplex wireless-powered relay with
self-energy recycling,” IEEE Wireless Commun. Lett., vol. 4, no. 2,
pp. 201–204, Apr. 2015.
[15] L. Liu, R. Zhang, and K.-C. Chua, “Multi-antenna wireless powered
communication with energy beamforming,” IEEE Trans. Commun.,
vol. 62, no. 12, pp. 4349–4361, Dec. 2014.
[16] E. Boshkovska, D. W. K. Ng, N. Zlatanov, A. Koelpin, and R. Schober,
“Robust resource allocation for MIMO wireless powered communication
networks based on a non-linear EH model,” IEEE Trans. Commun.,
[17] E. Boshkovska, D. W. K. Ng, N. Zlatanov, and R. Schober,
“Practical non-linear energy harvesting model and resource alloca-
tion for SWIPT systems,” IEEE Commun. Lett., vol. 19, no. 12,
pp. 2082–2085, Dec. 2015.
[18] E. Boshkovska, D. W. K. Ng, and R. Schober, “Power-efficient and
secure WPCNs with residual hardware impairments and a non-linear
EH model,” in Proc. IEEE Globecom, Dec. 2017, pp. 1–7.
[19] C. She, C. Yang, and T. Q. S. Quek, “Radio resource management for
ultra-reliable and low-latency communications,” IEEE Commun. Mag.,
vol. 55, no. 6, pp. 72–78, Jun. 2017.
[20] L. Zhang and Y.-C. Liang, “Average throughput analysis and optimiza-
tion in cooperative IoT networks with short packet communication,”
IEEE Trans. Veh. Technol., vol. 67, no. 12, pp. 11549–11562, Dec. 2018.
[21] Y. Polyanskiy, H. V. Poor, and S. Verdu, “Channel coding rate in the
finite blocklength regime,” IEEE Trans. Inf. Theory, vol. 56, no. 5,
pp. 2307–2359, May 2010.
[22] J. H. Park and D. J. Park, “A new power allocation method for parallel
AWGN channels in the finite block length regime,” IEEE Commun. Lett.,
vol. 16, no. 9, pp. 1392–1395, Sep. 2012.
[23] G. Durisi, T. Koch, J. Östman, Y. Polyanskiy, and W. Yang, “Short-
packet communications over multiple-antenna Rayleigh-fading chan-
nels,” IEEE Trans. Commun., vol. 64, no. 2, pp. 618–629, Feb. 2016.
[24] J. Meng and E. H. Yang, “Constellation and rate selection in adaptive
modulation and coding based on finite blocklength analysis and its
application to LTE,” IEEE Trans. Wireless Commun., vol. 13, no. 10,
pp. 5496–5508, Oct. 2014.
[25] M. Haghifam, M. R. Mili, B. Makki, M. Nasiri-Kenari, and T. Svensson,
“Joint sum rate and error probability optimization: Finite blocklength
analysis,” IEEE Wireless Commun. Lett., vol. 6, no. 6, pp. 726–729,
Dec. 2017.
[26] S. Xu, T.-H. Chang, S.-C. Lin, C. Shen, and G. Zhu, “Energy-efficient
packet scheduling with finite blocklength codes: Convexity analysis and
efficient algorithms,” IEEE Trans. Wireless Commun., vol. 15, no. 8,
pp. 5527–5540, Aug. 2016.
[27] A. Avranas, M. Kountouris, and P. Ciblat. (2018). “Energy-latency trade-
off in ultra-reliable low-latency communication with retransmissions.”
[Online]. Available: https://arxiv.org/pdf/1805.01332.pdf
[28] M. Mousaei and B. Smida, “Optimizing pilot overhead for ultra-reliable
short-packet transmission,” in Proc. ICC, May 2017, pp. 1–5.
[29] Q. Zhang, P. P. Liang, Y.-D. Huang, Y. Pei, and Y.-C. Liang, “Label-
assisted transmission for short packet communications: A machine learn-
ing approach,” IEEE Trans. Veh. Technol., vol. 67, no. 9, pp. 8846–8859,
Sep. 2018.
[30] J. Yang, “Achievable rate for energy harvesting channel with finite
blocklength,” in Proc. IEEE ISIT, Jul. 2014, pp. 811–815.
[31] S. L. Fong, V. Y. Tan, and J. Yang, “Non-asymptotic achievable rates
for energy-harvesting channels using save-and-transmit,” IEEE J. Sel.
Areas Commun., vol. 34, no. 12, pp. 3499–3511, Dec. 2016.
[32] B. Makki, T. Svensson, and M. Zorzi, “Wireless energy and information
transmission using feedback: Infinite and finite block-length analysis,”
IEEE Trans. Commun., vol. 64, no. 12, pp. 5304–5318, Dec. 2016.
[33] T. A. Khan, R. W. Heath, and P. Popovski, “Wirelessly powered
communication networks with short packets,” IEEE Trans. Commun.,
vol. 65, no. 12, pp. 5529–5543, Dec. 2017.
[34] O. L. A. López, H. Alves, R. D. Souza, and E. M. G. Fernández,
“Ultrareliable short-packet communications with wireless energy trans-
fer,” IEEE Signal Process. Lett., vol. 24, no. 4, pp. 387–391, Apr. 2017.
[35] O. L. A. López, E. M. G. Fernández, R. D. Souza, and H. Alves, “Ultra-
reliable cooperative short-packet communications with wireless energy
transfer,” IEEE Sensors J., vol. 18, no. 5, pp. 2161–2177, Mar. 2018.
[36] M. Razaviyayn, M. Hong, and Z.-Q. Luo, “A unified convergence
analysis of block successive minimization methods for nonsmooth
optimization,” SIAM J. Optim., vol. 23, no. 2, pp. 1126–1153, 2013.
[37] L. Zhang, M. Xiao, G. Wu, S. Li, and Y. C. Liang, “Energy-efficient
cognitive transmission with imperfect spectrum sensing,” IEEE J. Sel.
Areas Commun., vol. 34, no. 5, pp. 1320–1335, May 2016.
[38] G. R. Lanckriet and B. K. Sriperumbudur, “On the convergence of the
concave-convex procedure,” in Proc. Adv. Neural Inf. Process. Syst.,
2009, pp. 1759–1767.
[39] Q. Wu, M. Tao, D. W. K. Ng, W. Chen, and R. Schober, “Energy-
efficient resource allocation for wireless powered communication net-
works,” IEEE Trans. Wireless Commun., vol. 15, no. 3, pp. 2312–2327,
Mar. 2016.
CHEN et al.: RESOURCE ALLOCATION FOR WPINs WITH SPC
[40] K. Huang and E. Larsson, “Simultaneous information and power transfer
for broadband wireless systems,” IEEE Trans. Signal Process., vol. 61,
no. 23, pp. 5972–5986, Dec. 2013.
[41] X. Sun, S. Yan, N. Yang, Z. Ding, C. Shen, and Z. Zhong, “Short-packet
downlink transmission with non-orthogonal multiple access,” IEEE
Trans. Wireless Commun., vol. 17, no. 7, pp. 4550–4564, Jul. 2018.
[42] C. T. Kelley, Solving Nonlinear Equations With Newton’s Method, vol. 1.
Philadelphia, PA, USA: SIAM, 2003.
[43] A. Damnjanovic et al., “A survey on 3GPP heterogeneous networks,”
IEEE Wireless Commun., vol. 18, no. 3, pp. 10–21, Jun. 2011.
[44] Z. Chang, Z. Wang, X. Guo, Z. Han, and T. Ristaniemi, “Energy-
efficient resource allocation for wireless powered massive MIMO system
with imperfect CSI,” IEEE Trans. Green Commun. Netw., vol. 1, no. 2,
pp. 121–130, Jun. 2017.
[45] S. Boyd and L. Vandenberghe, Convex Optimization. New York, NY,
USA: Cambridge Univ. Press, 2004.
Jie Chen received the B.S. degree in communication
engineering from Chongqing University of Posts and
Telecommunications, China, in 2016. He is currently
pursuing the Ph.D. degree with the University of
Electronic Science and Technology of China, China.
His research interests include convex optimization,
resource allocation in wireless communication net-
works, and short packet communications.
Lin Zhang received the bachelor’s degree in com-
munication engineering from Sichuan University,
Chengdu, China, in 2011, and the Ph.D. degree
from the National Key Laboratory of Science and
Technology on Communications, University of Elec-
tronic Science and Technology of China, Chengdu,
in 2017, where he holds the post-doctoral position.
From 2014 to 2016, he was a Visiting Student
with the School of Electrical Engineering, Royal
Institute of Technology, Sweden. His research inter-
ests include cognitive radio, D2D communication,
content caching, non-orthogonal multiple access, and short packet communi-
cations. He received the IEEE GLOBECOM 2012 Best Paper Award and the
Travel Grant Award. He received the IEEE Region 10 Distinguished Student
Paper Award in 2016.
Ying-Chang Liang (F’11) was a Professor with
The University of Sydney, Australia, a Principal
Scientist and a Technical Advisor with the Institute
for Infocomm Research, Singapore, and a Visiting
Scholar with Stanford University, USA. He is cur-
rently a Professor with the University of Electronic
Science and Technology of China, China, where
he leads the Center for Intelligent Networking and
Communications, and serves as the Deputy Direc-
tor of the Artificial Intelligence Research Institute.
His research interests include the general area of
wireless networking and communications, cognitive radio, dynamic spectrum
access, the Internet-of-Things, artificial intelligence, and machine learning
techniques.
Dr. Liang was elected as a Fellow of the IEEE for contributions to cognitive
radio communications, and was also recognized by Thomson Reuters (Now
Clarivate Analytics) as a Highly Cited Researcher during 2014–2018. He
received the Prestigious Engineering Achievement Award from the Institute
of Engineers Singapore in 2007, the Outstanding Contribution Appreciation
Award from the IEEE Standards Association in 2011, and the Recognition
Award from the IEEE Communications Society Technical Committee on
Cognitive Networks in 2018. He has also received numerous best paper
awards, and the recent ones include the IEEE Jack Neubauer Memorial Award
in 2014, the IEEE ICC Best Paper Award in 2017, and the IEEE ComSoc’s
TAOS Best Paper Award in 2016.
Dr. Liang is the Founding Editor-in-Chief of the IEEE J OURNAL ON
S ELECTED A REAS IN C OMMUNICATIONS-Cognitive Radio Series, a Key
Founder, and the current Editor-in-Chief of the IEEE T RANSACTIONS ON
C OGNITIVE C OMMUNICATIONS AND N ETWORKING. He was the Chair of the
IEEE Communications Society Technical Committee on Cognitive Networks,
1461
and served as the Guest/Associate Editor for the IEEE T RANSACTIONS ON
W IRELESS C OMMUNICATIONS, the IEEE J OURNAL OF S ELECTED A REAS
IN C OMMUNICATIONS , the IEEE Signal Processing Magazine, the IEEE
T RANSACTIONS ON V EHICULAR T ECHNOLOGY, and the IEEE T RANS -
ACTIONS ON S IGNAL AND I NFORMATION P ROCESSING OVER N ETWORKS .
He was also an Associate Editor-in-Chief of the World Scientific Journal on
Random Matrices: Theory and Applications. He was a Distinguished Lecturer
of the IEEE Communications Society and the IEEE Vehicular Technology
Society, and served as the TPC Chair and an Executive Co-Chair for IEEE
GLOBECOM 2017.
Xin Kang (M’11) received the B.Eng. degree in
electrical engineering from Xi’an Jiaotong Univer-
sity, China, in 2005, and the Ph.D. degree in elec-
trical and computer engineering from the National
University of Singapore, Singapore, in 2011. He was
a Research Scientist with the Institute for Infocomm
Research, A*STAR, Singapore, from 2011 to 2014.
After that, he joined the Shield Lab, Huawei
Singapore Research Center, as a Senior Researcher.
Since 2016, he has been with the University of
Electronic Science and Technology of China as a
Full Professor. He has filed more than 30 patents on security protocols, and
contributed more than 15 technical proposals to 3GPP SA3. His research
interests include optimization, game theory, and network security. He has
received the Best Paper Award from the IEEE ICC 2017 and the best 50 papers
of the IEEE GLOBECOM 2014.
Rui Zhang (S’00–M’07–SM’15–F’17) received
the B.Eng. (Hons.) and M.Eng. degrees from the
National University of Singapore, Singapore, and
the Ph.D. degree from Stanford University, Stanford,
CA, USA, all in electrical engineering.
From 2007 to 2010, he was a Research Sci-
entist with the Institute for Infocomm Research,
A*STAR, Singapore. Since 2010, he has been with
the Department of Electrical and Computer Engi-
neering, National University of Singapore, where he
is currently the Dean’s Chair Associate Professor
with the Faculty of Engineering. He has authored over 300 papers. He has
been listed as a Highly Cited Researcher (also known as the World’s Most
Influential Scientific Minds), by Thomson Reuters (now Clarivate Analytics),
since 2015. His research interests include UAV/satellite communication,
wireless information and power transfer, multiuser MIMO, smart and recon-
figurable environment, and optimization methods.
He was a recipient of the 6th IEEE Communications Society Asia–Pacific
Region Best Young Researcher Award in 2011 and the Young Researcher
Award of the National University of Singapore in 2015. He was a co-recipient
of the IEEE Marconi Prize Paper Award in wireless communications in 2015,
the IEEE Communications Society Asia–Pacific Region Best Paper Award
in 2016, the IEEE Signal Processing Society Best Paper Award in 2016,
the IEEE Communications Society Heinrich Hertz Prize Paper Award in 2017,
the IEEE Signal Processing Society Donald G. Fink Overview Paper Award
in 2017, and the IEEE Technical Committee on Green Communications and
Computing Best Journal Paper Award in 2017. His co-authored paper received
the IEEE Signal Processing Society Young Author Best Paper Award in 2017.
He served for over 30 international conferences as the TPC Co-Chair, an
Organizing Committee Member, and as the Guest Editor for three special
issues of the IEEE J OURNAL OF S ELECTED T OPICS IN S IGNAL P ROCESSING
and the IEEE J OURNAL ON S ELECTED A REAS IN C OMMUNICATIONS. He
was an elected member of the IEEE Signal Processing Society SPCOM
Technical Committee from 2012 to 2017 and the SAM Technical Committee
from 2013 to 2015, and served as the Vice Chair for the IEEE Communications
Society Asia–Pacific Board Technical Affairs Committee from 2014 to 2015.
He serves as a member of the Steering Committee of the IEEE W IRELESS
C OMMUNICATIONS L ETTERS . He is a Distinguished Lecturer of the IEEE
Signal Processing Society and the IEEE Communications Society. He served
as an Editor for the IEEE T RANSACTIONS ON W IRELESS C OMMUNICATIONS
from 2012 to 2016, the IEEE J OURNAL ON S ELECTED A REAS IN C OMMUNI -
CATIONS : Green Communications and Networking Series from 2015 to 2016,
and the IEEE T RANSACTIONS ON S IGNAL P ROCESSING from 2013 to 2017.
He is currently an Editor of the IEEE T RANSACTIONS ON C OMMUNICA -
TIONS and the IEEE T RANSACTIONS ON G REEN C OMMUNICATIONS AND
N ETWORKING.