Performance Analysis of SWIPT for Intelligent Reflective Surfaces for Wireless Communication

The performance of simultaneous wireless information and power transfer (SWIPT) is investigated for an intelligent reflective surface (IRS)-aided wireless system. Tight bounds for the achievable rate and harvested energy are derived in closed-form for the time-switching (TS) and power-splitting (PS) protocols by adopting linear/non-linear energy harvesting models. The achievable rate-energy trade-off of IRS-aided SWIPT is quantified, and the effects of phase-shift quantization at the IRS are investigated. The impact of TS/PS factors, the number of reflective elements, reflective coefficients, and linear versus non-linear energy harvesting models is also investigated through analytical results and Monte-Carlo simulations.