RF energy harvesting communications: Recent advances and research issues

Abstract

Green radio communications has got a lot of attention in recent years due to its telling effects on telecom business and environment. On the other side, energy harvesting (EH) communication has emerged as a potential candidate to reduce the communication cost by tackling the problem in a contrasting fashion. While green communication techniques focus on minimization the use of radio resources, EH communication relies on environment friendly techniques to generate energy (from the renewable resources) and effective use of created energy conditioned on the fact that there is always energy available when required. Thus, the focus migrates from minimization of energy to optimal time domain distribution of energy and this causes a paradigm shift in radio resource allocation research. Instead of just focusing on average and maximum power constraint, the packet/energy arrival processes and packet/energy buffering interact in a challenging way to open new research opportunities. This chapter summarizes the major research work in the area of radio frequency (RF) energy harvesting resource allocation. First, we discuss the fundamental concepts related to energy harvesting communications. Then, we review the recent developments in this area and outline the major research challenges for the research community. We address the cooperation aspect of energy harvesting, which has emerged as an interesting area of research. Wireless powered communication networks allow energy and information transfer from the radio frequency waves and provide sustainable networks. Finally, we discuss a wireless powered relay network in detail and show the performance comparison of different relay selection techniques.