Distributed beamforming aided wireless energy transfer

Wireless sensor nodes are characterized by limited energy sources. Although the interest in wireless connectivity is ever-increasing and the need for Internet-of-Things (IoT) applications, such as automated remote access, monitoring, and control are well-appreciated, widespread adoption of networked wireless devices is largely constrained by their affordable deployment and maintenance costs and convenience of their long-term usage.
To this end, while energy-efficient protocol design is a key for long-lasting network operation, energy harvesting-aware solutions are becoming widely popular as green and affordable approaches towards sustainable network operation. Since ambient energy harvesting is not reliable or suitable for many field applications, an interesting approach is charging them via wireless energy transfer. In this presentation, we will discuss the limitations of radio frequency (RF) energy transfer, the performance of multihop RF energy transfer, and some of the use cases of RF energy
transfer combined with wireless information transfer. In particular, we will discuss the possible ways of improving RF energy transfer efficiency through passive and active distributed beamforming. The role of polarization along with phase alignment in achieving maximum beamforming gain will be discussed. Throughout the presentation, we will mutually corroborate our experimental findings and analytical intuitions in a few application scenarios.

Co-sponsored by: IEEE North Jersey Section

Speaker(s): Dr. Swades De,

Room: 202, Bldg: ECE Building, New Jersey Institute of Technology, 161 Warren Street, Newark, New Jersey, United States