Integrated Data and Energy Communication Network: A Comprehensive Survey

Abstract

In order to satisfy the power thirst of communication devices in the imminent fifth generation era, wireless charging techniques have attracted much attention both from the academic and industrial communities. Although the inductive coupling and magnetic resonance-based charging techniques are indeed capable of supplying energy in a wireless manner, they tend to restrict the freedom of movement. By contrast, radio frequency (RF) signals are capable of supplying energy over distances, which are gradually inclining closer to our ultimate goal-charging anytime and anywhere. Furthermore, transmitters capable of emitting RF signals have been widely deployed, such as TV towers, cellular base stations, and Wi-Fi access points. This communication infrastructure may indeed be employed also for wireless energy transfer (WET). Therefore, no extra investment in dedicated WET infrastructure is required. However, allowing RF signal-based WET may impair the wireless information transfer (WIT) operating in the same spectrum. Hence, it is crucial to coordinate and balance WET and WIT for simultaneous wireless information and power transfer, which evolves to integrated data and energy communication networks (IDENs). To this end, a ubiquitous IDEN architecture is introduced by summarizing its natural heterogeneity and by synthesizing a diverse range of integrated WET and WIT scenarios. Then the inherent relationship between WET and WIT is revealed from an information theoretical perspective, which is followed by the critical appraisal of the hardware enabling techniques extracting energy from RF signals. Furthermore, the transceiver design, resource allocation, and user scheduling as well as networking aspects are elaborated on. In a nutshell, this treatise can be used as a handbook for researchers and engineers, who are interested in enriching their knowledge base of IDENs and in putting this vision into practice.