On the Design of OFDM-Based Simultaneous Wireless Information and Power Transfer in Fog-Radio Access Networks

Abstract

The fog-computing-based radio access network (F-RAN) plays a vital role in improving high energy and spectral efficiency. But the problems is that large-scale remote radio heads (RRHs) and fog-computing-based access point (F-APs) result in an increase of transmission power consumption. RF energy harvesting technology is expected to prolong the lifetime of communication networks. In this work, take wireless fronthaul into consideration, we propose a new communication scenario, where the BBU pool transfers information and energy to an user equipment (UE) with the help of a F-AP. Subcarrier separating relaying protocol is adopted at the F-AP to achieve power and information splitting. Afterwards, we formulate a resource allocation problem by maximizing the energy harvested at the UE, subject to three constraints: total transmit power, peak power for each subcarrier, and minimum system throughput. Simulation results provide a practical insight into the impact of some related system parameters, e.g., signal-to-noise power ratio (SNR) and the BBU pool to F-AP distance on the performance of wireless energy harvesting through a F-AP. In particular, the proposed algorithm has significant improvement on the system performance.