Enabling Wireless Power Transfer in Cellular Networks: Architecture, Modeling and Deployment

By Kaibin Huang, Vincent Kin Nang Lau. IEEE Transactions on Wireless Communications, 2012

739 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Microwave power transfer (MPT) delivers energy wirelessly from stations called power beacons (PBs) to mobile devices by microwave radiation. This provides mobiles practically infinite battery lives and eliminates the need of power cords and chargers. To enable MPT for mobile recharging, this paper proposes a new network architecture that overlays an uplink cellular network with randomly deployed PBs for powering mobiles, called a hybrid network. The deployment of the hybrid network under an outage constraint on data links is investigated based on a stochastic-geometry model where single-antenna base stations (BSs) and PBs form independent homogeneous Poisson point processes (PPPs) with densities λb and λp, respectively, and single-antenna mobiles are uniformly distributed in Voronoi cells generated by BSs. In this model, mobiles and PBs fix their transmission power at p and q, respectively; a PB either radiates isotropically, called isotropic MPT, or directs energy towards target mobiles by beamforming, called directed MPT. The model is used to derive the tradeoffs between the network parameters (p, λb, q, λp) under the outage constraint. First, consider the deployment of the cellular network. It is proved that the outage constraint is satisfied so long as the product pλbα/2 is above a given threshold where α is the path-loss exponent. Next, consider the deployment of the hybrid network assuming infinite energy storage at mobiles. It is shown that for isotropic MPT, the product qλpλbα/2 has to be above a given threshold so that PBs are sufficiently dense; for directed MPT, zmqλpλbα/2 with zm denoting the array gain should exceed a different threshold to ensure short distances between PBs and their target mobiles. Furthermore, similar results are derived for the case of mobiles having small energy storage.

Subfields: Aerospace Engineering, Electrical and Electronic Engineering

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/5333f43de1f15d1ffecf923a88d49deddc4fdf97

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Citations in the corpus

Cognitive and Energy Harvesting-Based D2D Communication in Cellular Networks: Stochastic Geometry Modeling and Analysis (2014, methodology): “In [8], the authors deploy dedicated stations called “power beacons” that radiate out-of-band microwave signals to power all mobile devices.”
Spatial Modulation for Generalized MIMO: Challenges, Opportunities, and Implementation (2014, background): “…may be realized using new hybrid cellular deployments, where some stations often referred to as power beacons are overlaid onto the existing cellular network with the objective of charging wireless devices with the aid of microwave radiation links relying on microwave power transfer [298], [299].”
Advances in Energy Harvesting Communications: Past, Present, and Future Challenges (2016, positive): “In [190], an uplink cellular network is overlaid with randomly deployed power stations for wirelessly recharging mobile users via microwave radiation, and based on a stochastic geometry model, the network deployment is investigated under an outage constraint of data links.”
Optimal Resource Allocation in Full-Duplex Wireless-Powered Communication Network (2014, background): “The WPCN has been studied under various network setups, such as cellular network [15], random-access network [16], and multi-hop network [17].”
Fundamentals of Wireless Information and Power Transfer: From RF Energy Harvester Models to Signal and System Designs (2018, methodology): “Finally, stochastic geometry has been used to analyze the performance of various large-scale SWIPT networks in microwave and millimeter-wave bands [132]–[137].”
Throughput maximization in wireless powered communication networks (2013, background): “In [4], the wireless powered cellular network was studied in which dedicated power-beacons are deployed in the cellular network to charge mobile termin als.”
Wireless powered communication: opportunities and challenges (2014, background): “In this section, we introduce the basic operations of a WPCN, the key design challenges and solutions, and interesting extensions to many practical network models.”
Simultaneous Information and Power Transfer for Broadband Wireless Systems (2012, methodology): “One such architecture, proposed in [16], overlays a traditional cellular network with additional base stations dedicated for MPT to mobiles.”
Wireless Networks With RF Energy Harvesting: A Contemporary Survey (2014, background): “During the past decade, with the development in RF energy harvesting circuit, low power transfer for powering mobile terminals in wireless communication systems began to attract increasing attenti on [14], [15].”
Wireless Information and Power Transfer: Architecture Design and Rate-Energy Tradeoff (2012, background): “Networks that involve wirele ss power transfer were studied in [8], [9].”
A Survey of Device-to-Device Communications: Research Issues and Challenges (2018, neutral): “This is why this technique has recently been investigated in mobile networks [261], cognitive networks [262], [263] and relay assisted networks [264], [265].”
Wireless Information and Power Transfer With Full Duplex Relaying (2014, methodology): “In addition, the energy efficiency of OFDMA systems with SWIPT was studied in [9], and the application of SWIPT in multiuser systems and cellular networks was considered i n [10, 11].”
Opportunities and Challenges for Near-Field Wireless Power Transfer: A Review (2017, background): “Howev r, the t an fer efficiency d ps as it differs from the resonance frequency [58].”
Wireless Charging Technologies: Fundamentals, Standards, and Network Applications (2015, background): “By contrast, the deployment of dedicated power beacons overlaid with existing communication system has also been proposed as an alternative because of its cost-effectiveness and applicability [70].”
Throughput Optimization for Massive MIMO Systems Powered by Wireless Energy Transfer (2014, background): “Moreover, [17] studied a hybrid network which overlays an uplink cellular network with randomly deployed power beacons that charge users wirelessly, while [18] studied a similar setup in cognitive radio networks with secondary users harvesting wireless power opportunistically from nearby primary use”
Channel Estimation and Low-complexity Beamforming Design for Passive Intelligent Surface Assisted MISO Wireless Energy Transfer (2019, methodology): “MISO Wireless Channel Model We consider a point-to-point MISO wireless system consisting of an N -antenna PB [12], or source S, serving a single-antenna EH user”