Optimizing joint data and power transfer in energy harvesting multiuser wireless networks

Energy harvesting emerges as a potential solution for prolonging the lifetime of the energy-constrained mobile wireless devices. In this paper, we focus on radio frequency (RF) energy harvesting for multiuser multicarrier mobile wireless networks. Specifically, we propose joint data and energy transfer optimization frameworks for powering mobile wireless devices through RF energy harvesting. We introduce a power utility that captures the power consumption cost at the base station (BS) and the used power from the users’ batteries, and determine optimal power resource allocations that meet data rate requirements of downlink and uplink communications. Two types of harvesting capabilities are considered at each user: harvesting only from dedicated RF signals and hybrid harvesting from both dedicated and ambient RF signals. The developed frameworks increase the end users’ battery lifetime at the cost of a slight increase in the BS power consumption. Several evaluation studies are conducted in order to validate our proposed frameworks.