Wireless Powered Communication Networks Using Peer Harvesting

In this paper, we consider a wireless powered communication (WPC) network consisting of one hybrid access point (H-AP) and K wireless nodes. The H-AP broadcasts wireless energy to nodes in the downlink and receives information from K nodes abided by TDMA protocol in the uplink. The wireless nodes have energy harvesting capabilities and can harvest energy from H-AP and other nodes in different assigned time slots. We propose two new schemes for the WPC network that perform energy harvesting among peer nodes. In the first scheme, each wireless node harvests energy from peer nodes transmitting in the previous time slots, while each wireless node harvests energy from all nodes in the second scheme. The maximization of the sum achievable throughput and the minimization of the required harvested energy are studied. An effective heuristic optimization algorithm is proposed to solve them. The contribution of this work includes the proposal of two new peer harvesting schemes, the formulation of two relevant optimizations and their solutions using heuristic optimization algorithm, which has better technical adaptability for solving complicated objective functions. Simulation results demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed schemes in WPC networks.