Wi-Fi and Wireless Power Transfer Live Together

Power Beacons (PBs) can transfer energy wirelessly to devices in a wireless powered communication network. When PBs are deployed in an IEEE 802.11 Wireless LAN (WLAN), the energy transfer of PBs may interfere with the Wi-Fi stations if Wi-Fi stations and PBs share the same frequency band. In this letter, to resolve this interference problem, we propose a new Medium Access Control (MAC) protocol for IEEE 802.11 Wi-Fi stations to efficiently coexist with PBs. PBs contend just as Wi-Fi stations to gain opportunity for transferring energy and determine its operation based on the average energy level of stations. It is demonstrated that the throughput of the proposed MAC protocol is superior to that of IEEE 802.11 WLAN without interference control.