Joint wireless information and energy transfer in massive distributed antenna systems

In mobile communications, two potentially ground-breaking ideas have emerged in recent years: massive MIMO antenna technology, which delivers enormous information rates, and wireless energy transfer (WET), which makes remote charging of mobile users possible. This article realizes the huge potential of combining the two for high wireless information transfer (WIT) and WET. In particular, to maximize the synergy, the distributed version of massive MIMO (known as massive distributed antenna system, MDAS) is advocated to go with the joint wireless information and energy transfer (JWIET) system capable of both WIT and WET. We present the opportunities in MDAS-JWIET, and discuss research trends in MDAS with several architectures involving WET and WIT.