Wireless Powered Communication Networks: An Overview

TL;DR

This paper provides an overview of wireless powered communication networks (WPCN), highlighting their advantages, challenges, and future research directions in enabling remote wireless device power replenishment.

Contribution

It offers a comprehensive review of WPCN structures, techniques for performance enhancement, and identifies key challenges and future research directions.

Findings

WPCN significantly improves network performance and device lifetime.

Low WPT efficiency over long distances is a major challenge.

Future research includes optimizing joint wireless information and power transfer.

Abstract

Wireless powered communication network (WPCN) is a new networking paradigm where the battery of wireless communication devices can be remotely replenished by means of microwave wireless power transfer (WPT) technology. WPCN eliminates the need of frequent manual battery replacement/recharging, and thus significantly improves the performance over conventional battery-powered communication networks in many aspects, such as higher throughput, longer device lifetime, and lower network operating cost. However, the design and future application of WPCN is essentially challenged by the low WPT efficiency over long distance and the complex nature of joint wireless information and power transfer within the same network. In this article, we provide an overview of the key networking structures and performance enhancing techniques to build an efficient WPCN. Besides, we point out new and challenging future research directions for WPCN.