Optimum Performance Analysis and Receiver Design for OFDM-Based Frequency-Splitting SWIPT With Strong Nonlinear Effects

Multicarrier-based frequency splitting simultaneous wireless information and power transmission (FS-SWIPT) signals are very prone to nonlinear effects due to the combination of high-power energy harvesting (EH) subcarriers with low-power data subcarriers. In this article, we study the impact of nonlinear effects in FS-SWIPT signals, as well as ways to minimize these effects on the data transmission performance. We start by analytically characterizing the impact of nonlinear devices on the signals, showing that the nonlinear effects on data subcarriers are exacerbated by a factor close to the ratio between the power spectral densities of EH and data terms. This suggests that conventional receivers, that treat nonlinear distortion as an additional noise term, can have very poor performance. Then, we present an iterative receiver that iteratively estimates and cancels nonlinear distortion, and is able to have a performance close to the linear case. Finally, we study the optimum performance of FS-SWIPT signals with strong nonlinear distortion levels, showing that, by using optimum receivers, the nonlinear distortion term can be used to improve the performance of FS-SWIPT, even outperforming the linear case.