Worst-Case Energy Efficiency in Secure SWIPT Networks With Rate-Splitting ID and Power-Splitting EH Receivers

This paper studies the robust beamforming design for simultaneous wireless information and power transfer (SWIPT)-enabled networks, where the rate-splitting (RS) scheme and the power-splitting (PS) energy harvesting (EH) receiver are adopted for secure information transfer and EH, respectively. In order to explore the worst-case energy efficiency (EE) performance limit of the system, an EE maximization problem is formulated with the elliptically bounded channel state information error model under the constraints of the quality of service (QoS) requirements of information decoding users, the EH requirements of EH users and the power budget at the transmitter. To tackle the formulated non-convex problem, a sequential minimal optimization-based algorithm is first proposed to construct a mapping table and the optimal PS ratios of the PS EH receiver are found by searching the table. Then, a dual-layer iterative algorithm is designed to obtain the maximal EE based on the Dinkelbach’s method in the inner loop and the successive convex approximation method in the outer loop. To accelerate the convergence of the outer loop, an efficient initialization algorithm is also designed. Simulation results show that the RS scheme contributes to the EE enhancement, and the PS EH receiver enlarges the rate-energy region restricted by the non-linear EH circuit. Moreover, traditional sum-rate maximization design and power minimization design may induce a notable worst-case EE performance loss at the high-power region and the low-QoS requirement region, respectively.