Wireless Power Transfer over Non-Gaussian Channels with Multiple-Antenna Access Point

Wireless power transfer conveniently enables prolonging the lifetime of energy-constrained wireless nodes by means of scavenging the energy of radio-frequency signals. Most existing work on this topic assumes negligible background noise power and focuses only on harvesting the power signal transmitted by the access point (AP). In contract, in this paper we show that in Gaussian-Bernoulli (GB) impulsive noise channels such an assumption is invalid, especially in highly impulsive noise scenarios. In this respect, we study the performance of a multiple-antenna AP system with an energy- constrained single-antenna destination in various GB impulsive noise environments. The proposed system here adopts the harvest-then-transmit protocol where communication is accomplished over two distinct phases, namely, power transfer phase (down-link) and information transmission phase (up-link). To characterize system performance, we consider the ergodic capacity. An analytical expression for parameter is derived and then validated with Monte Carlo simulations. Results reveal that incorporating GB impulsive noise can considerably improve the performance of energy-harvesting based systems. It is also demonstrated that increasing the number of AP antennas will further enhance the ergodic capacity and that careful selection of the energy- harvesting time is crucial for achieving best performance.