Joint data and power transfer optimization for energy harvesting wireless networks

Energy harvesting techniques emerge as a potential solution for prolonging the lifetime of the energy-constrained mobile wireless devices. In this paper, we focus on radio frequency (RF) energy harvesting for multiuser multicarrier mobile wireless networks. The mobile users are capable of harvesting energy from the dedicated subcarriers over which they are communicating with the base station in addition to harvesting ambient RF signals. We propose a joint data and energy transfer optimization framework for powering mobile wireless devices through RF energy harvesting while minimizing the overall power consumption. The proposed framework determines the optimal power resources that need to be allocated to meet data rate requirements of downlink and uplink communications. Simulations show that substantial power savings are achieved by allowing the ambient RF energy harvesting as well as by exploiting the different system parameters.