Simultaneous Information and Energy Flow for IoT Relay Systems with Crowd Harvesting

It is expected that the number of wireless devices will grow rapidly over the next few years due to the growing proliferation of the Internet of Things. In order to improve the energy efficiency of information transfer between small devices, we review state-of-the-art research in simultaneous wireless energy and information transfer, especially for relay-based IoT systems. In particular, we analyze simultaneous information and energy transfer from the source node, and the design of time-switching and power-splitting operation modes, as well as the associated optimization algorithms. We also investigate the potential of crowd energy harvesting from transmission nodes that belong to multiple radio networks. The combination of source and crowd energy harvesting can greatly reduce the use of battery power and increase the availability and reliability for relaying. We provide insight into the fundamental limits of crowd energy harvesting reliability based on a case study using real city data. Furthermore, we examine the optimization of transmissions in crowd harvesting, especially with the use of node collaboration while guaranteeing quality of service.