Power Minimization in SWIPT Networks With Coexisting Power-Splitting and Time-Switching Users Under Nonlinear EH Model

This paper investigates the simultaneous wireless information and power transfer (SWIPT) networks with coexisting power-splitting users (PSUs) and time-switching users (TSUs) under the nonlinear energy harvesting (EH) model, where a multiantenna hybrid access point (H-AP) transmits information and power to multiple PSUs and TSUs. For such a network, an optimization problem is formulated to minimize the required transmit power at the H-AP subject to users’ information rate and harvested energy constrains by jointly optimizing the H-AP’s transmit beamforming vectors, PSUs’ power splitting (PS) ratios, and TSUs’ time switching (TS) factors. Due to the interferences among PSUs and TSUs, and the nonlinear EH model, the problem is nonconvex and has no known solution method. Thus, a two-layer algorithm is first presented based on semidefinite relaxation (SDR) and it is theoretically proved that the global optimum is achieved. However, since 1-D search is adopted by the two-layer algorithm, which may be too computationally exhaustive, a successive convex approximate-based (SCA-based) algorithm is then proposed as an alternative, which is able to find the near-optimal solution with low complexity by using the first-order approximation. The numerical results show that with the same EH requirements, TSUs are more likely to enter into the saturation region compared with PSUs, but their EH efficiency is higher than that of PSUs. It is also shown that the minimal required transmit power under the nonlinear EH model is much lower than that under the linear one. Although after the saturation point of the nonlinear EH model, the linear one yields a lower required transmit power, it is a fake result, because the linear EH model mismatches the nonlinearity of practical EH circuits.