NUS Presentation Title 2001

Wireless Information and Power

Transfer: A Unified Study

Rui Zhang
National University of Singapore
 NUS Presentation Title 2001
RF-Based Wireless Power Transfer

Energy Transmitter Energy Receiver

Energy Receiver Architecture

 Why RF-based Wireless Power Transfer (WPT)?

 longer distance than near-field WPT (e.g., RFID)
 advantages over traditional batteries and/or energy harvesting
 low cost: no need to replace/dispose batteries
 safety: in e.g. toxic environment
 robust: overcome lack of light, temp. diff., or vibration (traditional energy harvesting)
 convenience: controllable, continuous, scheduled on demand
 abundant applications in wireless (sensor) networks
 building automation, healthcare, smart grid, structural monitoring…..
 current limitation
 low received power (e.g., <1uW at distance > 5m, transmit power <1W)
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High-Efficiency
NUS Presentation Title 2001
WPT: An Energy
Beamforming Approach
 Transmit covariance matrix:
Energy Beamforming

 Optimization problem (convex):

G

Energy Receiver

Energy
 Beamforming is optimal: Transmitter

 Maximum received power: beamforming gain

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Wireless Information
NUS Presentation Title 2001 and Power Transfer:
A Unified Study
RF-Powered Wireless Sensor Network
Downlink (Access Point → Sensors)
Uplink (Sensors → Access Point)

Energy Flow

Access Point Wireless Sensors

w/ fixed power supply Information Flow w/o fixed power supply

Rate-Energy Region[Varshney08]

 “Asymmetric” information/energy flow

Rate (bits/sec/Hz)
 Need joint energy and communication scheduling Simultaneous
Transmission
 Information and power transfer (downlink) Orthogonal
 orthogonal transmission (TDMA) Transmission
 easy to implement, but not efficient
 simultaneous transmission Energy (joules/sec)
 efficient, but difficult to implement
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Simultaneous Information and Power
NUS Presentation Title 2001

Transfer: Main Challenges

 Separated information and energy receivers
 Use “time switching” or “power splitting”
 Pros: easy to implement, off-the-shelf hardware available
 Cons: receiver sensitivity difference, e.g.
 information decoder: -60dBm
 energy harvester: -10dBm

 Integrated information and energy receivers

Main difficulty: practical energy harvesting circuits not yet able to
decode information directly 5
 NUS Presentation Title 2001
Special Case: SISO AWGN Channel

Integrated Receiver (Upper Bound)

Rate-Energy Region
Rate (bits/sec/Hz)

? Power Splitting

Time Switching

Energy (joules/sec)

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Simultaneous Information and Power
NUS Presentation Title 2001

Transfer: Proposed Solutions

 Separated information and energy receivers

 exploit multi-antennas
 information/energy beamforming [ZhangHo11]
 exploit channel/interference dynamics
 dynamic time switching/power splitting [LiuZhangChua12]

 Integrated information and energy receivers

 exploit energy detection
 energy modulation [ZhouZhangHo12]

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MIMO Broadcasting for Simultaneous
NUS Presentation Title 2001

Information and Power Transfer [ZhangHo11]

 Two scenarios:
 separated receivers: G ≠ H
 co-located receivers: G = H
G
 Objective: characterize “rate-energy”
region boundary pairs H
 Optimization problem (convex):

A three-node MIMO broadcast system with

perfect CSIT/CSIR
generalized linear transmit power
constraint

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Separated Receivers (G ≠ H)
NUS Presentation Title 2001

• Semi-closed-form optimal solution:

• Optimal solution obtained by Lagrange duality method

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 NUS Presentation Title 2001
Rate-Energy Region (Separated Receivers)

energy beamforming

spatial multiplexing

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 NUS Presentation Title 2001
Co-Located Receivers (G=H)
• Optimal solution simplified as

• Optimal solution obtained by Lagrange duality method

• Special case: H is circulant (OFDM channel) [GroverSahai10]

• Provide only rate-energy upper bound (each antenna cannot decode

information and harvest energy optimally at the same time) 11
 NUS Presentation Title 2001
Practical Receivers: MIMO Case
 Time Switching

 Power Splitting

 Two Special Cases:

 Uniform Power Splitting:
 On-Off Power Splitting (Antenna Switching):
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 NUS Presentation Title 2001
Rate-Energy Region (Co-Located Receivers)

250

200

?
Energy Unit

150

100

Outer Bound
50 Time Switching
Uniform Power Splitting
Antenna Switching
0
0 2 4 6 8 10 12
Rate (bits/channel use)
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Dynamic Time Switching: Exploiting
NUS Presentation Title 2001

Channel/Interference Variations
[LiuZhangChua12]

 Optimal Receiver Switching (assume perfect CSIR)

 Information Decoder: when h is good and I is weak
 Energy Harvester: when h is poor and I is strong (helpful interference)
 Optimal switching rule for arbitrary (h, I)?
 should be consistent with receiver sensitivity difference
 With vs. Without CSIT?
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 NUS Presentation Title 2001
Case without CSIT

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 NUS Presentation Title 2001
Case with CSIT

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 NUS Presentation Title 2001
Delay-Limited Information Transfer

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 NUS Presentation Title 2001
Outage-Energy Region

Similar results can be obtained for the case with no-delay-limited

information transfer (ergodic capacity): “Rate-Energy” Region 18
 NUS Presentation Title 2001
Example of Outage-Energy Region

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Problem Formulation
NUS Presentation Title 2001

Non-convex problems: but strong duality holds, thus solvable by

Lagrange duality (solutions omitted for brevity)
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 NUS Presentation Title 2001
Optimal Switching Rule (without CSIT)

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Optimal Switching Rule (with CSIT)
NUS Presentation Title 2001

Transmitter Power Off

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Separated Information and Energy
NUS Presentation Title 2001

Receivers: General Architecture

DPS: Dynamic Power Splitting (include time switching as a special case)

Energy Receiver
Information Receiver

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 NUS Presentation Title 2001
Integrated Information and Energy Receivers:
General Architecture [ZhouZhangHo12]

 Pros: compact, low power, …..

 Cons: hardware cost, noisy rectifier …..
 Equivalent Channel (for information receiver with ρ(t)→1):

where

 “Energy Modulation” at Tx, Energy Detection at Rx 24

Separated vs. Integrated Receivers: Rate-
NUS Presentation Title 2001

Energy Tradeoff Comparison

Integrated receiver is
better off when large
harvested energy is
desired

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Concluding Remarks
NUS Presentation Title 2001

 Wireless information and power transfer: an exciting new area of research,

many open problems (PHY, MAC, Network …..)

 Fundamental difference: information rate scales with power

logarithmically, but energy scales with power linearly

New ideas: energy beamforming, dynamic time switching/power splitting,

helpful interference (for energy harvesting), opportunistic energy harvesting,
energy modulation, integrated receiver…..

 Information-energy transfer tradeoffs: rate-energy region, outage-energy

region …..

 Performance bound easily obtainable, but achievability remains largely

open (due to practical circuit limitations)
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 NUS Presentation Title 2001
References
[Varshney08]: “Transporting information and energy simultaneously,” IEEE International Symposium
on Information Theory (ISIT), July 2008.

[GroverSahai10]: P. Grover and A. Sahai, “Shannon meets Tesla: wireless information and power
transfer,” IEEE International Symposium on Information Theory (ISIT), June 2010.

[ZhangHo11]: R. Zhang and C. K. Ho, “MIMO broadcasting for simultaneous wireless information and
power transfer,” IEEE Global Communications Conference (Globecom), December 2011.

[LiuZhangChua12]: L. Liu, R. Zhang, and K. C. Chua, “Wireless information transfer with opportunistic
energy harvesting,” IEEE International Symposium on Information Theory (ISIT), July 2012.

[ZhouZhangHo12]: X. Zhou, R. Zhang, and C. K. Ho, “Wireless information and power transfer:
architecture design and rate-energy tradeoff,” to appear in IEEE Global Communications Conference
(Globecom), December 2012.

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