Wireless Information and Power Transfer with MISO Beamforming

Speaker: Prof. Xin Wang (FDU)

Time and Date: 10:00- , Nov. 22, 2013

Place: Room B415, Building of Computing Centre, Handan Campus

Abstract

Traditionally, energy-constrained wireless networks such as sensor networks are typically powered by batteries that have limited operation time. Although replacing or recharging the batteries can prolong the lifetime of the network to certain extent, it is in general costly, inconvenient, and even hazardous (say, in toxic environments) or impossible (e.g., for sensors embedded in building structures or inside human bodies). Recently, wireless power transfer emerges as a promising new solution to provide perpetual and reliable energy supplies to wireless networks, which has drawn significant attention. In wireless powered communication networks, dedicated hybrid information/energy access points with constant power supplies are deployed to provide both wireless data and wireless energy access to a set of distributed mobile stations. In this talk, we will first provide an overview of wireless power transfer for its state-of-the-art applications and enabling technologies. We will then focus on the far-field wireless power transfer enabled by radio signals and its potential applications in wireless communication. Since radio signals carry information and energy at the same time, a unified study on simultaneous wireless information and power transfer (SWIPT) is investigated. In this talk, we will present the new challenges in the optimal design of SWIPT systems and highlight some key results in this exciting new research direction. In particular, we will study the optimization of joint energy and information transmit beamforming/precoding for achieving efficient wireless information and energy transfer simultaneously in a broadcast channel setup, and furthermore address the important issue of secrecy communication in this case from a physical-layer security perspective.

Biography

Dr. Rui Zhang received the B.Eng. (First-Class Hons.) and M.Eng. degrees from the National University of Singapore in 2000 and 2001, respectively, and the Ph.D. degree from the Stanford University, Stanford, CA USA, in 2007, all in electrical engineering. Since 2007, he has worked with the Institute for Infocomm Research of Singapore, where he is now a Senior Scientist. Since 2010, he has joined the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the National University of Singapore as an Assistant Professor. His current research interests include multiuser MIMO, cognitive radio, cooperative communication, green communication, wireless communication powered by energy harvester and wireless power transfer, smart grid, and optimization theory. He has authored/co-authored over 170 papers in internationally refereed journals and conferences. His work has led to significant scientific impact, with more than 10 published journal papers listed as Highly Cited Papers on ISI Web of Science. He was the recipient of the 6th IEEE Communications Society (ComSoc) Asia-Pacific Best Young Researcher Award in 2010, and the Young Investigator Award of the National University of Singapore in 2011. He has served for various IEEE conferences as Technical Program Committee (TPC) members and Organizing Committee members. He is now an elected member of the IEEE Signal Processing Society SPCOM (Signal Processing for Communications and Networking) Technical Committee and SAM (Sensor Array and Multichannel) Technical Committee, and an editor for the IEEE Transactions on Wireless Communications and the IEEE Transactions on Signal Processing. He has also served as Guest Editors for several special issues in the IEEE and EUROSIP Journals on signal processing and/or wireless communication.