Experimental Evaluation of Geometry and Reciprocity-Based Beamforming with Large Arrays for RF Wireless Power Transfer

TL;DR

This study experimentally compares geometry-based and CSI-based beamforming for large-array RF wireless power transfer, demonstrating near-parity in LoS conditions and quantifying performance gaps in obstructed scenarios.

Contribution

It provides the first experimental evaluation of geometry-based beamforming with a large indoor array, highlighting its potential and limitations compared to CSI-based methods.

Findings

Geometry-based beamforming achieves 18.75 dB power gain in LoS conditions.

Performance gap of 3.83 dB in obstructed LoS scenarios.

Geometry-based approach reduces system overhead while maintaining near-optimal power transfer.

Abstract

This paper experimentally investigates geometry-based multi-antenna RF wireless power transfer (WPT) using a large-scale distributed indoor transmit array measuring 8 m by 4 m. Geometry-based beamforming uses known transmitter and receiver positions to perform phase-only precoding, avoiding the need for explicit channel estimation or feedback. The experiments use a ceiling-mounted array of 41 phase-synchronized transmit antennas operating at 920 MHz. Geometry-based beamforming is compared with channel state information (CSI)-based beamforming. The spatial power delivery is evaluated through two-dimensional scans over an area of 1.25 m by 1.25 m. The harvested DC power is measured using an RF-to-DC energy profiler. Under line-of-sight (LoS) conditions, geometry-based beamforming achieves a power gain of 18.75 dB, which is within 0.82 dB of CSI-based beamforming. In obstructed LoS scenarios with reflections, the gain decreases to 16.7 dB, while CSI-based beamforming achieves 20.53 dB, resulting in a performance gap of 3.83 dB. These results quantify the trade-off between reduced system overhead and robustness to multipath propagation in geometry-driven WPT, and represent an initial step toward geometry-based wireless power transfer enabled by digital twins.