Physical Communication 25 (2017) 555–563

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Physical Communication
journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/phycom

Full length article

Integrated wireless communications and wireless power transfer: An

overview
Liang Han a,b, *, Lemin Li c
a
Tianjin Key Laboratory of Wireless Mobile Communications and Power Transmission, Tianjin Normal University, Tianjin 300387, China
b
College of Electronic and Communication Engineering, Tianjin Normal University, Tianjin 300387, China
c
School of Communications and Information Engineering, University of Electronic Science and Technology of China, Chengdu 611731, China

article info a b s t r a c t
Article history: As an important application of the fifth generation (5G) mobile communication systems, Internet of Things
Received 15 June 2017 (IoT) has attracted worldwide research interests. Since most of the communication devices in IoT are
Received in revised form 20 October 2017 powered by batteries, these devices always have limited operation time. Wireless power transfer (WPT)
Accepted 20 October 2017
technology, which can transfer power over a wireless medium (without any wires), can avoid the need
Available online 8 November 2017
to manually replace or recharge the batteries of the wireless devices in IoT. For electromagnetic (EM)
Keywords: radiation-based WPT, since radio-frequency (RF) signals that transport energy can at the same time be
Wireless power transfer used for wireless communications, integrated wireless communications and WPT becomes a new research
Simultaneous wireless information and area which has attracted great research interests. In this paper, we first introduce two main research
power transfer paradigms for integrated wireless communications and WPT, i.e., simultaneous wireless information and
Wireless-powered communication network power transfer (SWIPT) and wireless-powered communication network (WPCN). Then we provide an
overview of the state-of-the-art of both SWIPT and WPCN, respectively. Finally, we point out the new and
challenging future research direction.
© 2017 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

1. Introduction The idea of WPT was first conceived and experimented by

Mobile Internet and Internet of things (IoT) are the two main
drivers for the fifth generation (5G) mobile communication sys-
tems and have attracted worldwide research interests [1]. Since
most of the wireless communication devices in IoT are powered
by batteries, these devices always have limited operation time. In
order to extend the lifetime of the IoT, the common way is by re-
placing or recharging the batteries, which is usually inconvenient,
costly, and sometimes dangerous (e.g., in toxic environments) or
even infeasible (e.g., for implanted medical devices). As a more
convenient and safer approach, energy harvesting (EH) commu-
nication systems, where communication devices harvest energy
from the environment, have received much attention. However,
conventional EH communication systems, which use renewable
energy sources such as solar or wind, may not be practical in
some situations because most of the renewable energy sources
are time-varying, uncontrollable, and not available indoors. To
overcome those limitations, wireless power transfer (WPT), which
can transmit energy over a wireless medium, has been considered
as a viable solution for supplying energy.
*
Correspondence to: Binshui West Rd. 393, Xiqing District, Tianjin 300387,
China.
E-mail addresses: hanliang_tjnu@163.com (L. Han), lml@uestc.edu.cn (L. Li).
Nicola Tesla in the 1890s. However, this area had not received
much attention due to the low energy transfer efficiency until
recently. In general, there are two kinds of WPT approaches. Tradi-
tional WPT can be carried out using the near-field electromagnetic
(EM) induction (e.g., inductive coupling, capacitive coupling), but
it is only for short-distance applications (less than a meter). As the
microwave technologies had a series of breakthroughs including
the high-power microwave generators and the invention of recti-
fying antennas (rectennas), which can efficiently convert the radio-
frequency (RF) signals to a direct current (DC) signal by integrating
with a rectifier (e.g., diode), WPT can be carried out using far-
field EM radiation (i.e., RF signals) for long-range (up to a few
kilometers) applications.
For EM radiation-based WPT, since RF signals that transport
energy can at the same time be used for wireless communications,
integrated wireless communications and WPT becomes a new re-
search area which has attracted great research interests. There are
two main research paradigms for integrated wireless communica-
tions and WPT. One direction of research is called simultaneous
wireless information and power transfer (SWIPT), which refers
to using the same RF signal to transmit both energy that will be
harvested at the receiver and information that will be decoded by
the receiver. In [2], Varshney investigated a point-to-point single-
antenna SWIPT system for narrow-band additive white Gaussian

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.phycom.2017.10.015
1874-4907/© 2017 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
556 L. Han, L. Li / Physical Communication 25 (2017) 555–563
(a) SWIPT with separated EH and ID receiver.
(b) SWIPT with co-located EH and ID receiver.
(c) WPCN with separated energy-AP and data-AP.
(d) WPCN with hybrid-AP.
Fig. 1. General system models for integrated wireless communications and WPT.
noise (AWGN) channel from an information-theoretic perspective.
This work was later extended to frequency-selective AWGN chan-
nels in [3]. It was assumed in [2] and [3] that the receiver has the
ability to decode information and harvest the energy simultane-
ously from the same received signal. However, this assumption
cannot be realized due to practical circuit limitations. As such,
practical receivers that need to split the received signal into two
separate circuits, one for EH and one for information decoding
(ID), should be considered. In [4], Zhang et al. first proposed two
practical receiver architectures for SWIPT, i.e., time-switching and
power-splitting. Since then, SWIPT has become a very hot topic
and a number of studies on SWIPT have been conducted from
different aspects [5–12]. Another direction of research aims to
design a new type of wireless network named wireless-powered
communication network (WPCN). In WPCN, the wireless devices
communicate with an access point (AP) in the uplink by using
the energy harvested from WPT in the downlink. The WPCN has
been studied under different network architectures, such as cel-
lular network [13], random-access network [14], and multi-hop
network [15].
The rest of the paper is organized as follows. First, we intro-
duce the general system models of both SWIPT and WPCN. In
Section 3, we present the state-of-the-art of SWIPT, including prac-
tical receiver structure, rate-energy tradeoff, transceiver design for
SWIPT, relay-assisted SWIPT, and security for SWIPT. In Section 4,
we present the state-of-the-art of WPCN, including protocol design
for WPCN, resource allocation and optimization for WPCN, energy
beamforming, and wireless powered cooperative communication
network. Finally, Section 5 points out the new and challenging
future research direction.
2. General system models
As shown in Fig. 1, there are four models for integrated wireless
communications and WPT. The first model is SWIPT with separated
EH and ID (Fig. 1(a)), where an EH circuit and an ID circuit are
carried out as two separated receivers with separated antennas.
This structure can be easily implemented and can perform EH and
ID separately and concurrently. The second model is SWIPT with
co-located EH and ID receiver (Fig. 1(b)), where the same group of
receiving antennas are shared for both EH and ID. This structure
can reduce the number of circuits, and make the receivers more
compact. From the channel point of view, EH and ID receivers
will observe different channels for the first model and the same
channels for the second model. Note that both cases of SWIPT only
consider downlink transmission. The third model is WPCN with
separated energy-AP and data-AP (Fig. 1(c)), where the energy-AP
transmits energy to wireless devices in the downlink, and the wire-
less devices transmit their own data to data-AP in the uplink using
the harvested energy. For the fourth model (Fig. 1(d)), energy-
AP and data-AP are co-located and integrated as a hybrid-AP. The
integrated hybrid-AP makes the coordination of information and
energy transmissions in the network easier compared to separated
energy-AP and data-AP.
Without loss of generality, we assume the transmitter is
equipped with M ≥ 1 transmitting antennas, and the receiver is
equipped with N ≥ 1 receiving antennas. Considering a narrow-
band transmission over a quasi-static fading channel, the baseband
equivalent channel from the transmitter to the receiver can be
modeled as H ∈ C N ×M . As such, the baseband transmission from
the transmitter to the receiver can be modeled as
y = Hx + n, (1)
M ×1 N ×1
where x ∈ C denotes the transmit signal, y ∈ C denotes the
received signal, and n denotes the noise vector.
We first consider the received signal is used for EH. For sim-
plicity, we ignore the background noise at the EH receiver. Using
the law of energy conservation, it can be assumed that the total
harvested energy from all receiving antennas at the EH receiver,
denoted by Q , is proportional to the total harvested energy of the
received baseband signal, i.e.,
Q = ζ E ∥Hx∥2 = ζ · trace HSHH ,
[ ] ( )
(2)
where ζ is a constant that denotes the loss in the energy transducer
for converting the harvested energy to electrical energy, and S
denotes the covariance matrix of x.
 L. Han, L. Li / Physical Communication 25 (2017) 555–563 557

If the received signal is used for ID, the achievable data rate is
given as
( )
1
R = log2 det I + HSHH . (3)
σ 2

3. The state-of-the-art of SWIPT (a) Time switching.

So far, there have been many studies on SWIPT from different

aspects. In this section, we present the state-of-the-art of SWIPT
with the focus on practical receiver structure, rate-energy tradeoff,
transceiver design for SWIPT, relay-assisted SWIPT, and security
for SWIPT.

(b) Power splitting.

3.1. Practical receiver structure

To practically realize SWIPT with co-located EH and ID receiver,

the received signal needs to be split into two distinct circuits, one
for EH and one for ID. In the following, we provide an overview of
the most practical SWIPT receiver structures, i.e., time-switching,
power-splitting, antenna switching and integrated receiver, as
shown in Fig. 2.

• Time-switching receiver: For this receiver structure, signal

splitting is carried out in the time domain. As such, the signal
received in one time slot will be used either for ID or EH
(Fig. 2(a)). The hardware implementation of time-switching (c) Antenna switching.
receiver is simple but requires accurate time synchroniza-
tion.
• Power-splitting receiver: By using a power splitting com-
ponent, this receiver structure splits the received power at
each antenna into two power streams which have different
power levels. One signal stream is forwarded to the rectenna
circuit for EH, and the other is converted to baseband
for ID (Fig. 2(b)). Compared to time-switching structure,
the power-splitting receiver has higher receiver complexity
and needs to optimize the power splitting ratio. However,
power-splitting receiver can achieve instantaneous SWIPT
because the signal received in one time slot is used for both
(d) Integrated receiver.
ID and EH.
• Antenna-switching receiver: When multiple antennas
are deployed at the receiver, low-complexity antenna- Fig. 2. Practical SWIPT receiver structures.
switching receiver can be used to enable SWIPT. All the re-
ceive antennas are divided into two groups where one group
is used for ID and the other group is used for EH (Fig. 2(c)). power-splitting receivers when more harvested energy is
The antenna-switching structure is easy to implement be- required.
cause it does not require stringent time synchronization as
in time-switching structure and does not need to optimize Besides the above structures, the spatial decomposition tech-
the power splitting ratio as in power-splitting structure. In nique used in point-to-point multiple-input multiple-output
fact, antenna-switching could be considered as a special case (MIMO) systems can achieve SWIPT in the spatial domain by
of power-splitting with binary power splitting ratios at each exploiting the multiple degrees of freedom (DoFs) [9]. Based on
receive antenna. the singular value decomposition (SVD) of the MIMO channel,
• Integrated receiver: Unlike the time-switching and power- the communication link can be transformed into parallel eigen-
splitting receivers which split the signal at the RF band, the channels which can transport either information or energy. Each
integrated receiver combines the RF front-ends of ID and EH eigenchannel is used for either ID or EH, as shown in Fig. 3.
receivers. As such, the signal is first converted into direct
current (DC) signal by using a rectifier (Fig. 2(d)), and then 3.2. Rate-Energy tradeoff
the DC signal is divided into two streams for EH and ID, re-
spectively. Compared to time-switching or power-splitting Traditional wireless communication and WPT have different
receivers, the integrated receiver can save the circuit power goals: The goal of wireless communication is to maximize the
consumed by the active mixer used in the ID. However, the information rate, while the goal of WPT is to maximize the trans-
ID receiver needs to perform non-coherent detection from mission energy efficiency. For SWIPT system, both information rate
the baseband signal, which means conventional phase mod- and energy efficiency should be considered at the same time. For
ulation must be replaced by energy modulation. In general, example, if the transmitter ignores the information rate and only
the integrated receiver is better than time-switching and consider the energy efficiency, the transmit waveform can obtain
558 L. Han, L. Li / Physical Communication 25 (2017) 555–563
Fig. 3. MIMO SWIPT based on SVD.
the optimal energy efficiency but may lead to poor information
rate, and vice versa. Therefore, there exists a fundamental rate-
energy tradeoff between the two goals.
In [2], Varshney proposed a capacity-energy function to show
the fundamental tradeoff for a point-to-point single-antenna
SWIPT system in narrow-band AWGN channels. In [3], Grover
and Sahai extended [2] to frequency-selective AWGN channels
with the average power constraint, and showed that a significant
tradeoff exists between information rate and harvested energy
in frequency-domain power allocation. In [4], Zhang and Ho first
investigated the rate-energy region for a MIMO wireless broadcast-
ing system, which consists of an EH receiver and an ID receiver
equipped with multiple antennas. In [5], the authors proposed
two types of practical receiver architectures called separated and
integrated information and energy receivers and investigated the
rate-energy tradeoffs. The difference between these two types of
architectures is that the integrated receiver integrates the front-
end components of the separated receiver. The optimal transmis-
sion strategy for the two architectures were derived to achieve
different rate-energy tradeoffs. In [16], the rate-energy region of
SWIPT for MIMO broadcasting channel under the nonlinear RF EH
model was studied. Unlike the above results which use Gaussian
input given an average power constraint, [17] derived the fun-
damental rate-energy tradeoffs for SWIPT with arbitrary shaped
discrete inputs considering a peak power constraint and an average
power constraint.
3.3. Transceiver design for SWIPT
The performance of SWIPT system can be further improved by
optimization of the transceiver. Therefore, transceiver design has
been considered as an important aspect for feasible implementa-
tion of SWIPT.
• Transceiver Design in Multiuser Scenarios: Reference [18]
considered a downlink multiple-input single-output (MISO)
broadcasting SWIPT system with a multi-antenna access
point (AP) and multiple separated single-antenna ID or EH
receivers, as shown in Fig. 4. The authors formulated the
joint information and energy transmit beamforming de-
sign to maximize the weighted sum-power transferred to
all EH receivers while guaranteeing individual signal-to-
interference-and-noise ratio (SINR) requirements at each
ID receivers. Different from [18], the objective of [19] is to
minimize the total transmission power by jointly designing
transmit beamforming and receive power-splitting under
both SINR constraints for ID and harvested power con-
straints for EH. In [20], an approach was proposed to realize
SWIPT in a broadband system where orthogonal frequency
division multiplexing (OFDM) and transmit beamforming
are used to create a set of parallel sub-channels. In [21],
the authors investigated the optimal transmit beamforming
designs for SWIPT in MISO interference channels, where
Fig. 4. A general model of MISO SWIPT beamforming system with separated ID and
EH receivers.
the RF signal transmitted from the energy transmitter to
the ID receiver acts as interference, as shown in Fig. 5. The
problems for maximizing the information rate were formu-
lated under the constraint of minimum required harvested
energy. In [22], the authors investigated SWIPT in K -user
MIMO interference channels. The total transmit power of
all transmitters was minimized by jointly designing trans-
mit beamformers, power splitters, and receive filters, while
guaranteeing the SINR constraint for ID and the harvested
power constraint for EH at each receiver. Reference [23] ex-
tended [22] to full-duplex K -pair MIMO interference chan-
nel.
• Transceiver Design with different CSI: In [24], the authors
investigated the robust beamforming for the multi-antenna
wireless broadcasting SWIPT system, under the assumption
of imperfect channel state information (CSI) at the trans-
mitter. The objective of [24] is to maximize the worst-case
harvested energy for the EH receiver in the case that the rate
for the ID receiver is above a threshold. Reference [25] as-
sumed imperfect CSI at the base station and developed two
robust joint beamforming and power splitting designs that
minimize the transmission power under both the SINR and
EH constraints per user. In [26], the authors relaxed the re-
quirement of CSI and assumed each transmitter only knows
its own CSI to all the receivers. The goal is to maximize the
total harvested energy at the EH receivers with individual
power constraints at transmitters and SINR constraints at
the ID receivers.
3.4. Relay-Assisted SWIPT
Cooperative relaying has been considered as an effective way to
extend network coverage and improve system capacity. When the
source and destination are located far away from each other, it is
natural to use relay-assisted SWIPT to improve the QoS. Moreover,
the use of WPT will stimulate mobile nodes to take part in cooper-
ation, because the relay can be powered by the RF signals and the
battery lifetime of the relays can prolong.
• SWIPT in One-Way Relay Networks: The study in [27] in-
vestigated a low-complexity technique for SWIPT in MIMO
relay channels, where the antenna elements at the relay
 L. Han, L. Li / Physical Communication 25 (2017) 555–563
Fig. 5. Schematic diagram for the SWIPT system in two-user MISO interference
channel.
node were used either for decoding or for rectifying. In [28],
an amplify-and-forward (AF) relaying network was con-
sidered, where an energy constrained relay node harvests
energy from the received RF signal and uses that harvested
energy to forward the source information to the destination.
Two relaying protocols, i.e., time switching-based relaying
protocol and power splitting-based relaying are proposed,
respectively. In [29], the authors jointly optimized power
allocation, relay placement and power splitting over Rician
channels to minimize the outage probability under the har-
vested power constraint at the destination node. In [30], the
SWIPT in a MIMO DF relay system was considered, where
the relay is a multi-antenna node equipped with an EH re-
ceiver and an ID receiver. The main objective is to maximize
the achievable transmission rate of the overall link by opti-
mizing the source/relay precoders. For SWIPT OFDM relay-
ing system, [31] proposed power-splitting relaying protocol
when the direct link between the source and destination
does not exist and transmission mode adaptation protocol
when the direct link between the source and destination is
available.
• SWIPT in Two-Way Relay Networks: In [32], the authors
investigated the relay beamforming design problem for
SWIPT in a non-regenerative two-way multi-antenna relay
network. The objective is to maximize the sum rate of two-
way relay network under the transmit power constraint at
relay and the EH constraint at EH receiver. Reference [33]
investigated beamforming design problem for orthogonal-
space–time-block-code (OSTBC)-based AF MIMO two-way
relay networks with SWIPT. The objective is to maximize the
achievable sum rate under a sum transmit power constraint
and an EH constraint. Reference [34] considered SWIPT in a
two-way relaying network, where a DF protocol is employed
for data exchange between two source devices at different
rates. The data exchange is accomplished in two time phases
with possibly asymmetric time phase ratios, where the relay
is powered by the source devices in the first phase through
SWIPT either by power splitting or by time switching.
559
Fig. 6. A general model of secrecy SWIPT system.
3.5. Security for SWIPT
Due to the open nature of wireless channels, the signals that
carry information can also be received by power receivers or other
unintended receivers, so SWIPT may suffer from information leak-
age. If the power receivers are malicious, they should be treated as
potential eavesdroppers, as shown in Fig. 6.
• Secure Beamforming Design for SWIPT: In [35], the au-
thors investigated the security problem for a multiuser MISO
SWIPT system where one multi-antenna transmitter sends
information and energy simultaneously to an ID receiver
and multiple EH receivers. Two problems were investigated:
the first problem is to maximize the secrecy rate for the
ID receiver under individual harvested energy constraints
of EH receivers, while the second problem is to maximize
the weighted sum-energy transferred to EH receivers un-
der a secrecy rate constraint for ID receiver. The authors
in [36] investigated robust beamforming for secure com-
munication in a multiuser MISO SWIPT system with pas-
sive eavesdroppers and potential eavesdroppers. In [37],
the authors investigated beamforming design to maximize
the achievable secrecy rate under a total power constraint
and an energy harvesting constraint. Considering imperfect
CSI, [38] proposed a robust secure beamforming design for
multiuser MISO secure broadcasting channels. The objective
is to minimize the transmit power under the secrecy rate
outage probability constraint for legitimate users and the
harvested energy outage probability constraint for energy
harvesting receivers.
• Artificial Noise Aided Secure Transmission for SWIPT:
In [39], the authors studied the robust artificial noise aided
secure transmission design in MISO SWIPT system. The
objective is to maximize the worst-case secrecy rate un-
der the transmit power constraint and the worst-case en-
ergy harvesting constraint. Reference [40] proposed a new
frequency-domain artificial noise aided transmission strat-
egy for SWIPT OFDMA systems, where the ID receiver are
served with best-effort secrecy data and the EH receiver
harvest energy with minimum required harvested power.
In [41], the authors investigated robust secure artificial noise
aided beamforming and power splitting design for a MISO
cognitive radio downlink network, where a secondary user
560 L. Han, L. Li / Physical Communication 25 (2017) 555–563
Fig. 7. Harvest-then-transmit protocol for a WPCN.
coexists with multiple primary users and multiple energy
harvesting receivers.
4. The state-of-the-art of WPCN
In this section, we present the state-of-the-art of WPCN with
the focus on protocol design for WPCN, resource allocation and op-
timization for WPCN, energy beamforming, and wireless powered
cooperative communication network.
4.1. Protocol design for WPCN
In [42], the author proposed a harvest-then-transmit protocol
which is the most commonly used in WPCN. In this protocol,
all users first harvest the energy broadcast by the hybrid-AP in
the downlink and then transmit their independent information
to the hybrid-AP in the uplink based on time-division-multiple-
access (TDMA), as shown in Fig. 7. Reference [43] extended [42]
by employing a full-duplex hybrid-AP, which broadcasts wireless
energy in the downlink and at the same time receives independent
information in the uplink via TDMA.
Using space-division multiple-access (SDMA) techniques, ref-
erence [44] proposed an optimal algorithm to maximize the up-
link sum-rate by jointly designing the downlink energy precoding
matrices, the uplink information precoding matrices, and time
allocation between the downlink and the uplink phases.
In [45], the authors investigated opportunistic scheduling in
WPCN. Based on the battery management policy at the EH
users, two opportunistic scheduling policies called harvest-then-
select and harvest-or-select protocols were employed, respec-
tively. Compared to harvest-then-transmit protocol, these pro-
tocols provided fairness in the resource utilization and required
much less CSI.
Fig. 8. Harvest-then-cooperate protocol.
4.2. Resource allocation and optimization for WPCN
In the WPCN with a hybrid-AP, resource allocation and opti-
mization plays an important role in improving the system perfor-
mance.
Given a total time constraint, reference [42] investigated the
sum-throughput maximization of all users by jointly optimizing
the time allocation for the downlink WPT and the uplink informa-
tion transmissions based on the users’ CSI and their average energy
harvesting rate. The closed-form solution showed a doubly near-
far phenomenon. That is, a far user from the hybrid-AP, which re-
ceives less wireless energy than a nearer user in the downlink, has
to transmit with more power in the uplink for reliable information
transmission. As such, more time will be allocated to the near users
than the far users, which results in unfair rate allocation among
different users.
Besides [42], several papers have investigated the time alloca-
tion for harvest-then-transmit protocol. In [46], the authors in-
vestigated the joint time allocation and beamforming design to
maximize the system sum-throughput. Reference [47] maximized
the uplink sum rate performance by jointly optimizing energy
and time resource allocation for multiple users in both infinite
capacity and finite capacity energy storage cases. Reference [48]
obtained the maximum throughput by balancing the time duration
between the wireless power transfer phase and the information
transfer phase while satisfying the energy causality constraint,
the time duration constraint, and the quality-of-service constraint.
The goal of [49] is to investigate the maximum achievable energy
efficiency of the network via joint time allocation and power con-
trol while taking into account the initial battery energy of each
user.
Reference [50] investigated WPCN for OFDM systems, where
a full-duplex hybrid-AP broadcasts energy signals to users in the
downlink, and the users transmit information signals to the hybrid-
AP in the uplink based on OFDM access. A joint subcarrier schedul-
ing and power allocation problem was considered to maximize the
 L. Han, L. Li / Physical Communication 25 (2017) 555–563
sum-rate under perfect self-interference cancellation and imper-
fect self-interference cancellation.
4.3. Energy beamforming
For a multi-antenna energy-AP, energy beamforming schemes
can improve the wireless energy efficiency.
The studies in [51–53] investigated RF-based energy beam-
forming to maximize the amount of transferred energy. In [51], the
authors designed an adaptive energy beamforming scheme for a
point-to-point MISO system with imperfect CSI feedback. In [52],
the authors investigated the efficient channel acquisition method
for point-to-point MIMO energy beamforming based on channel
reciprocity. The study revealed the tradeoff between training du-
ration and wireless power transfer. Reference [53] extended [52]
by considering wide-band frequency-selective fading channels,
which offers both frequency-diversity and energy-beamforming
gains. The objective of [54] is to optimize the users’ throughput and
yet guarantee their rate fairness. To address the doubly near-far
problem, the authors maximized the minimum throughput among
all users by jointly designing downlink–uplink time allocation,
the downlink energy beamforming, uplink transmit power allo-
cation and receive beamforming. In [55], the average throughput
performance of energy beamforming in a multi-antenna WPCN
was considered. The closed-form expressions and asymptotic ex-
pressions at a high SNR for both delay-limited and delay-tolerant
transmission modes were derived.
4.4. Wireless powered cooperative communication network
By integrating the idea of cooperative communication into
WPCN, wireless powered cooperative communication network can
further improve the performance of WPCN.
In [56], the authors designed a harvest-then-cooperate pro-
tocol, in which the energy constrained source and relay harvest
energy from the AP in the downlink and work cooperatively in the
uplink for the source’s information transmission, as shown in Fig. 8.
It was shown that the proposed protocol can improve the average
throughput compared to the case with no relay. Reference [57]
extended the model in [56] by equipping multiple antennas at the
hybrid-AP. The optimal energy beamforming vector and the time
split between harvest and cooperation were investigated.
For wireless-powered AF and DF relaying in cooperative com-
munications, reference [58] proposed time-switching based EH
and information transmission protocols with two modes of EH at
the relay. For continuous time EH, the EH time can be any per-
centage of the total transmission block time. For discrete time EH,
the whole transmission block is either used for EH or information
transmission. The proposed protocols do not require CSI at the
transmitter side and enable relay transmission with preset fixed
transmission power.
In [59], a harvest-use-store power splitting relaying strategy
with distributed beamforming was proposed for wireless-powered
multi-relay cooperative networks. In the proposed strategy, the
harvested energy is prioritized to power information relaying
while the remainder is accumulated and stored for future usage
with the help of a battery.
5. Future research direction
Besides the research in the previous sections, integrated wire-
less communications and wireless power transfer also has many
research problems yet to be studied. In the following, we point out
the new and challenging future research direction.
561
5.1. Massive mimo based SWIPT/WPCN
As one of the most promising candidate technique for the 5G
wireless network, massive MIMO or large-scale antenna systems
has drawn significant research interests. The concept of massive
MIMO was first proposed in [60], where the asymptotic perfor-
mance of noncooperative cellular systems was analyzed when the
number of base station antennas is unlimited. It was shown in [60]
that by employing simple linear signal processing, i.e., maximal
ratio transmission (MRT) for the forward links and maximal ratio
combining (MRC) for the reverse links, the effects of uncorrelated
noise and small-scale fading are eliminated, and the transmit
power can be made arbitrary small.
In [61], the authors investigated the feasibility of wireless en-
ergy transfer using massive antenna arrays. It was shown that by
massive antenna beamforming, the range of wireless energy trans-
fer can be increased and the downlink energy can be decreased
for a given target outage probability. Based on the results in [61],
massive MIMO can be used on SWIPT or WPCN to further improve
the system performance. Therefore, massive MIMO based SWIPT
or WPCN is a promising research direction.
5.2. Millimeter-Wave based SWIPT/WPCN
Millimeter-wave (mmWave) that operates on a frequency rang-
ing from 30 to 300 GHz has become a new frontier for 5G wireless
systems [62]. Due to the availability of large spectrum resources
at high-frequency ranges, mmWave can obtain much higher data
rates. In [63], the authors investigated a scenario where low-power
devices extract energy and/or information from the mmWave sig-
nals. Simulation results showed that mmWave energy harvesting
generally outperforms lower frequency. Thus, mmWave is desired
to be utilized on SWIPT or WPCN. However, due to the different
physical characteristics and design features at mmWave, prior
works on SWIPT and WPCN in lower frequency networks cannot
directly apply to mmWave networks. Therefore, mmWave based
SWIPT or WPCN needs to be investigated further.
5.3. Heterogeneous networks with SWIPT/WPCN
In heterogeneous networks, different types of cells (e.g., macro-
cell, femtocell, picocell, etc.) are deployed to provide higher
throughput and better coverage [64–66]. Therefore, heterogeneous
networks have been regarded as one of the most promising tech-
niques for 5G wireless systems. In [67], the authors proposed a
tractable model for joint downlink and uplink transmission of
K -tier heterogeneous cellular networks with SWIPT, where the
mobile users with power splitting receiver architecture decode
information and harvest energy in the downlink, and the user use
the harvested energy for information transmission in the uplink.
Two cell associations, i.e., nearest base station cell association and
maximum received power cell association, were considered. How-
ever, the research on heterogeneous networks with SWIPT/WPCN
is still rare, many topics such as interference management, cell as-
sociation, and network deployment, need to be further addressed.
5.4. New security techniques for SWIPT
In Section 3.5, we have explained the reason why SWIPT may
suffer from information leakage. We also provided an overview on
the current security techniques for SWIPT, i.e., secure beamforming
design and artificial noise aided secure transmission. In fact, the
security issue for SWIPT is different from traditional physical-
layer security issue because the techniques designed for SWIPT
should focus on not only information transmission security, but
also power transfer efficiency. Thus, it is necessary to adopt more
new and effective security techniques to enhance performance.
562 L. Han, L. Li / Physical Communication 25 (2017) 555–563
5.5. Cross-layer design
So far, most of the research on SWIPT and WPCN focused on the
physical (PHY) layer. In a practical system, medium access control
(MAC) layer plays an important role in fairness and efficiency of
the system. Therefore, efficient SWIPT and WPCN system need to
take a cross-layer design [68], which considers parameters and
information available at the physical, MAC, and network layers, to
jointly control data transmission and energy transfer.
6. Conclusion
As the development of WPT, integrated wireless communica-
tions and WPT has become a new research direction which has
received considerable attention. In this paper, we first introduced
two main research paradigms for integrated wireless communi-
cations and WPT, i.e., SWIPT and WPCN. Then we provided an
overview of the state-of-the-art of both SWIPT and WPCN, respec-
tively. Finally, some potential research directions were identified.
Acknowledgments
This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foun-
dation of China (61701345), High School Science and Technology
Development Foundation of Tianjin (043135202JW1709), and the
Doctoral Foundation of Tianjin Normal University (5RL135).
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Liang Han received the M.S. and Ph.D. degree in commu-
nication and information systems, both from University
of Electronic Science and Technology of China, Chengdu,
China, in 2010 and 2013, respectively. Since 2014, he has
been with the College of Electronic and Communication
Engineering, Tianjin Normal University. His current re-
search interests include multi-hop relaying, full-duplex
communications and green communications.
Lemin Li received the B.S. degree in electrical engineering
from Shanghai Jiaotong University, Shanghai, China, in
1952. From 1952 to 1956, he was with the Department of
Electrical Communications at Shanghai Jiaotong Univer-
sity. Since 1956, he has been with the Chengdu Institute
of Radio Engineering (now the University of Electronic
Science and Technology), where he is a now full professor
at the Key Lab of Broadband Optical Fiber Transmission
and Communication Networks, UESTC. From 1980 to 1982,
he was a visiting scholar in the Department of Electrical
Engineering and Computer Science, University of Califor-
nia at San Diego. He has authored/coauthored over 200 research papers in the
areas of communication networks. His previous research interests were in the area
of digital information transmission and communication networks and are now in
the areas of communication networks including broadband networks and wireless
networks. Prof. Li is a member of the Chinese Academy of Engineering (CAE).