Wireless Powered Microwave and mmWave based Communication Networks - A Survey

Far-field wireless energy transmission and energy harvesting have emerged out recently as a potential alternative source to power the next generation communication networks. The capability to provide stability, controllable and on-demand power source in the low power communication devices which present at a distance is realized through the integration of an RF energy harvesting circuit integrated into the device or information receiving unit. This research work is based on a comprehensive survey on the progress of wireless powered communication networks (WPCN) over the past few years. It firstly discusses an overview of the RF energy harvesting communication networks with system architecture, power management techniques used at the receiver and existing techniques available in the literature for the enhancement of WPCN. Energy beamforming in both microwave and mmWave based WPCN are surveyed with specific insights on the evolving of efficient beamforming algorithms for enhancing system performance. Some important technical challenges and research directions are also derived with a purpose to give researchers useful insights in this emerging area of research having a huge scope of improvements in the near future of green communication technology.