Distributed Energy Beamforming and Information Transfer: A Case Study for Multiway Relay Channels

This paper proposes a novel distributed energy beamforming and information transfer (DEBIT) scheme for simultaneous information and power transfer in wireless networks. We focus on the design of the DEBIT scheme over multiway relay channels (MWRCs), where multiple users exchange information with an energy-harvesting amplify-and-forward relay node. We develop the optimal transmission strategy to maximize the achievable sum-rate of the proposed DEBIT scheme. A low-complexity time-switching based suboptimal DEBIT scheme (DEBIT-TS) is also proposed, and its achievable sum-rate performance is analyzed. Simulation results demonstrate that the proposed DEBIT and DEBIT-TS schemes significantly outperform the conventional power-splitting based energy-harvesting schemes.