Wireless Networks With RF Energy Harvesting: A Contemporary Survey

By Xiao Lu, Ping Wang, Dusist Niyato, Dong In Kim, Zhu Han. IEEE Communications Surveys and Tutorials, 2014

2,435 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Radio frequency (RF) energy transfer and harvesting techniques have recently become alternative methods to power the next-generation wireless networks. As this emerging technology enables proactive energy replenishment of wireless devices, it is advantageous in supporting applications with quality-of-service requirements. In this paper, we present a comprehensive literature review on the research progresses in wireless networks with RF energy harvesting capability, which is referred to as RF energy harvesting networks (RF-EHNs). First, we present an overview of the RF-EHNs including system architecture, RF energy harvesting techniques, and existing applications. Then, we present the background in circuit design as well as the state-of-the-art circuitry implementations and review the communication protocols specially designed for RF-EHNs. We also explore various key design issues in the development of RF-EHNs according to the network types, i.e., single-hop networks, multiantenna networks, relay networks, and cognitive radio networks. Finally, we envision some open research directions.

Subfields: Electrical and Electronic Engineering

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/65ef995f70f6cdd94885b123a30668b5d716b208

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Citations in the corpus

A Survey on Multiple-Antenna Techniques for Physical Layer Security (2017, background): “Generally speaking, a power receiver is usually closer to the source than the information receiver, since the energy harvesting circuitry is less sensitive than the information decoding circuitry [238], [239].”
A Survey on Emerging SDN and NFV Security Mechanisms for IoT Systems (2019, background): “Therefore, RFID tags present extremely low costs and can be battery-free by leveraging electromagnetic energy harvesting [33].”
Simultaneous Wireless Information and Power Transfer (SWIPT): Recent Advances and Future Challenges (2018, methodology): “If the power of signal processing noise is denoted by σ 2 sp, the maximum ID rate of receiver j decoded from the source [11] i can be written as”
Incentive Mechanism Design for Wireless Energy Harvesting-Based Internet of Things (2017, methodology): “This battery-free design can reduce the complexity and costs of the sensors, which is particularly suitable for the considered IoT sensing applications and has been adopted by other applications [33], [34].”
Communications and Signals Design for Wireless Power Transmission (2016, background): “Numerous research efforts have been recently devoted to maximizing the achievable rate-energy region under various setups of SWIPT systems [106]–[109].”
Advances in Energy Harvesting Communications: Past, Present, and Future Challenges (2016, background): “Unlike the traditional battery-operated communications, the energy of ambient energy sources available to energy harvesting communication nodes is time-variant and often sporadic even though there is potentially an infinite amount of energy.”
Computation Rate Maximization in UAV-Enabled Wireless-Powered Mobile-Edge Computing Systems (2018, background): “On the other hand, WPT can provide low-power mobile devices with sustainable and cost-effective energy supply by using radio-frequency (RF) signals [3].”
An Overview of Sustainable Green 5G Networks (2016, background): “RF energy harvesting, also known as wireless power transfer (WPT), allows receivers to harvest energy from received RF signals [14, 15].”
Wireless Charging Technologies: Fundamentals, Standards, and Network Applications (2015, methodology): “Survey Scope Main Contribution [9] Wireless network with RF energy harvesting Review of i) fundamentals and circuit design for RF energy harvesting, ii) resource allocation schemes and communication protocols for various types of RF-powered wireless network, and iii) practical challenges and future ”
A Survey of Multi-Access Edge Computing in 5G and Beyond: Fundamentals, Technology Integration, and State-of-the-Art (2019, background): “The basic concept of EH is to capture various available energy from different sources to power the energy-constrained devices for prolonging their lifetime [98].”
Physical-Layer Security of 5G Wireless Networks for IoT: Challenges and Opportunities (2019, background): “The concept of SWIPT is that the RF signals can be simultaneously utilized to power multiple uses for EH and information decoding in a relatively long distance [72].”
Energy-Harvesting Wireless Sensor Networks (EH-WSNs) (2018, methodology): “A survey on wireless networks using RF energy harvesting was provided in Lu et al. (2015), where the authors discussed the state-of-the-art in RF circuit design and implementations as well as describing resource allocation design issues in RF-EHWSNs, and presenting future research directions and…”
5G cellular: key enabling technologies and research challenges (2015, methodology): “Since information and power transfer operate with different power sensitivities at the receiver (e.g. – 10 dBm and – 60 dBm for energy and information receivers, respectively) [6], and the conventional receiver architecture is designed for information transfer only, practical SWIPT optimal circuits ”
Wireless powered communication networks: an overview (2015, background): “Another appealing line of related research is simultaneous wireless information and power transfer (SWIPT), which exp lores a dual use of microwave signals to transfer information jointly with e nergy using the same waveform (see [1], [2] and the reference s therein).”
User-Centric Cell-Free Massive MIMO Networks: A Survey of Opportunities, Challenges and Solutions (2021, neutral): “Problem Type Approach Reference”
Fundamentals of Wireless Information and Power Transfer: From RF Energy Harvester Models to Signal and System Designs (2018, methodology): “Though not explicitly stated this way, this is the design philosophy adopted in the early works on SWIPT, WPCN and WPBC, see e.g. [11]–[18], [22]–[40].”
Full-Duplex Wireless-Powered Relay With Self-Energy Recycling (2014, background): “Hence, the relay operates in full-duplex mode in the second phase with simultaneous information transmission and energy harvesting .”
A Comprehensive Survey on Millimeter Wave Communications for Fifth-Generation Wireless Networks: Feasibility and Challenges (2020, background): “Based on a recent survey in [79], several RF EH realizations utilize CMOS technology, which can yeild 1 V DC output, with − 22 dBm to − 14 dBm harvested RF power.”
Review of Internet of Things (IoT) in Electric Power and Energy Systems (2018, background): “• Using RF energy harvesting to power the wireless communication networks [117].”