On wireless power transfer in two-tier massive MIMO HetNets: Energy and rate analysis

In this paper, we investigate the potential application of wireless power transfer (WPT) in heterogeneous networks (HetNets) with massive multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) antennas. Users first harvest energy from the downlink WPT, and then use the harvested energy for uplink transmission. We adopt the downlink received signal power (DRSP) based user association to maximize the harvested energy, and address the impact of massive MIMO on the user association. By using new statistical properties, we then obtain the exact expressions for the average harvested energy and the average uplink achievable rate of a user in such networks. Numerical results corroborate our analysis and demonstrate that compared to deploying more small cells, the use of a large number of antennas is more appealing since it brings in significant increase in the harvested energy of the HetNets. In addition, results illustrate that serving more users in the massive MIMO aided macrocells decreases the harvested energy and the uplink achievable rate of the HetNets.