Yi Qian Lei ShuTrung Q. DuongMaged Elkashlan

ver the last decade, energy harvesting has emergedas a promising approach to enable self-sufficient

and self-sustaining operation for low-cost devices in ener-gy-constrained networks by scavenging energy from theambient environment to power up devices.

In wireless sensor networks, small, wireless, autonomoussensors usually operate at ultra-low power. If these wire-less sensors, which spread throughout homes or factories,in buildings or even outdoors to monitor all kinds of envi-ronmental conditions, are powered by energy harvesting,there are no batteries to replace and no laborious costassociated with replacing them. As such, wireless sensornetworks can be deployed in hard-to-reach areas to pro-vide ubiquitous coverage.

In cellular networks, energy harvesting can be used toprovide power in many elements of a telecom network,saving considerable cost in electricity supply and providinglow maintenance monitoring. Powering base stations withwind or solar power allows telecom networks to expandbeyond the limit of the power grid. The possibility of redis-tribution of the renewable energy in smart grid allows fur-ther efficient utilization, although it leads to manychallenges as well.

Another important focus of this research area is RFenergy harvesting. RF energy is currently broadcastedfrom billions of radio transmitters around the world,including mobile telephones, handheld radios, mobile basestations, and television/ radio broadcast stations. The abili-ty to harvest RF energy, from ambient or dedicatedsources, enables wireless charging of low-power devicesand provides significant benefits to product design, usabili-ty, and reliability.

This Feature Topic includes 10 accepted papers, whichaddress a number of critical and relevant issues studied inthe emerging area of energy harvesting communications.We hope this Feature Topic is able to help readers obtainbetter understanding of some key issues in energy harvest-ing and drive more research interest.

This Feature Topic starts with an article, Smart RFEnergy Harvesting Communications: Challenges andOpportunities by Deepak Mishra et al., which explores

various communication strategies that can complement theRF harvesting hardware advances toward the realization ofenergy harvesting communication networks.

The article A General Utility Optimization Frameworkfor Energy-Harvesting-Based Wireless Communicationsby Hang Li et al. introduces a general utility optimizationframework for energy-harvesting-based wireless communi-cation systems subject to a novel type of energy usage con-straint.

The article Application of Smart Antenna Technolo-gies in Simultaneous Wireless Information and PowerTransfer, written by Zhiguo Ding et al., proposes anapplication of smart antenna technologies, MIMO andrelaying, to simultaneous wireless information and powertransfer systems, and provides some future research chal-lenges for the design of those systems.

The article RF-Powered Cognitive Radio Networks:Technical Challenges and Limitations by Lina Mohjazi etal. presents an overview of the architecture of cognitiveradio networks that operate based on intended and unin-tended RF energy harvesting.

The article Provisioning Quality of Service to EnergyHarvesting Wireless Communications by Xiaojing Chen etal. develops a dynamic string tautening method to producethe most energy-efficient schedule that adapts to thebursty characteristics of wireless traffic and energy harvest-ing.

The article Increasing Sustainability and Resiliency ofCellular Networks Infrastructure by Harvesting RenewableEnergy by Andres Kwasinski et al. discusses the use ofharvested renewable energy to power cellular base stationsto reduce the carbon footprint of cellular infrastructureand to enable the deployment of cellular service in areasthat lack electrification infrastructure.

The article Wireless Powered Communication: Oppor-tunities and Challenges, written by Suzhi Bi et al., pre-sents an overview of state-of-the-art RF enabled wirelessenergy transfer technology and it applications to wirelesscommunications, with highlights on the key design chal-lenges, solutions, and opportunities ahead.

The article Fundamental Limits of Energy Harvesting

Frank Schmidt

IEEE Communications Magazine April 201568

GUEST EDITORIAL

ENERGY HARVESTING COMMUNICATIONS: PART 1

O

Chau Yuen

COMMAG_GUEST_EDITORIAL-Yuen.qxp_Guest Editorial 3/31/15 2:24 PM Page 68

IEEE Communications Magazine April 2015 69

GUEST EDITORIAL

Communications by Omur Ozel et al. surveys recentresults in the literature and point to open problems in thefields of communication theory, information theory, signalprocessing, and networking.

The article Enhancing Wireless Information andPower Transfer by Exploiting Multi-Antenna Techniques,written by Xiaoming Chen et al., provides a tutorial onvarious aspects of multi-antenna-technique-based wirelessinformation and power transfer, with a focus on tacklingthe challenges through parameter optimization and proto-col design.

The article Green Delivery: Proactive Content Cachingand Push with Energy-Harvesting-Based Small Cells bySheng Zhou et al. proposes a new access network frame-work that enables efficient content delivery via energy-har-vesting-based small cells to provide more multicastopportunities.

BIOGRAPHIESCHAU YUEN (yuenchau@sutd.edu.sg) received his B. Eng and Ph.D. degreesfrom Nanyang Technological University, Singapore, in 2000 and 2004,respectively. He was a postdoctoral fellow at Lucent Technologies Bell Labs,Murray Hill, New Jersey, during 2005. He was a visiting assistant professorat Hong Kong Polytechnic University in 2008. During the period of20062010, he worked at the Institute for Infocomm Research, Singapore,as a senior research engineer. He joined Singapore University of Technologyand Design as an assistant professor in June 2010. He serves as an Associ-ate Editor for IEEE Transactions on Vehicular Technology and was awardedTop Associate Editor for three consecutive years. In 2012, he received theIEEE Asia-Pacific Outstanding Young Researcher Award. He has held posi-tions on several conference organizing committees, and is on TechnicalProgram Committees of various international conferences.

MAGED ELKASHLAN received his Ph.D. degree in electrical engineeringfrom the University of British Columbia, Canada, in 2006. From 2006 to2007, he was with the Laboratory for Advanced Networking at the Uni-versity of British Columbia. From 2007 to 2011, he was with the Wire-less and Networking Technologies Laboratory at the CommonwealthScientific and Industrial Research Organization (CSIRO), Australia. Healso held an adjunct appointment at the University of Technology Syd-ney, Australia, between 2008 and 2011. In 2011, he joined the Schoolof Electronic Engineering and Computer Science at Queen Mary, Univer-sity of London, United Kingdom, as an assistant professor. His researchinterests include millimeter wave communications, energy harvesting,cognitive radio, and wireless security. He currently serves as an Editorfor IEEE Transactions on Wireless Communications, IEEE Transactions onVehicular Technology, and IEEE Communications Letters. He receivedBest Paper awards at IEEE ICC 14, International Conference on Commu-nications and Networking in China in 2014, and IEEE VTC-Spring 2013.He received the Exemplary Reviewer Certificate of IEEE CommunicationsLetters in 2012.

YI QIAN [M95, SM07] is an associate professor in the Department of Elec-trical and Computer Engineering, University of Nebraska-Lincoln (UNL).Prior to joining UNL, he worked in the telecommunications industry,academia, and the government. Some of his previous professional positionsinclude serving as a senior member of scientific staff and technical advisorat Nortel Networks, a senior systems engineer and technical advisor at sev-eral startup companies, an assistant professor at the University of PuertoRico at Mayaguez, and a senior researcher at the National Institute of Stan-dards and Technology. His research interests include information assuranceand network security, network design, network modeling, simulation andperformance analysis for next generation wireless networks, wireless adhoc and sensor networks, vehicular networks, smart grid communicationnetworks, broadband satellite networks, optical networks, high-speed net-works, and the Internet. He has a successful track record in leadingresearch teams and publishing research results in leading scientific journalsand conferences. Several of his recent journal articles on wireless networkdesign and wireless network security are among the most accessed papersin the IEEE Digital Library. He is the current Chair of the Communicationsand Information Security Technical Committee in the IEEE CommunicationsSociety. He is an IEEE Distinguished Lecturer.

TRUNG Q. DUONG received his Ph.D. degree in telecommunications systemsfrom Blekinge Institute of Technology (BTH), Sweden, in 2012, and thencontinued working at BTH as a project manager. Since 2013, he has joinedQueens University Belfast, United Kingdom, as a lecturer (assistant profes-sor). He held visiting positions at Polytechnic Institute of New York Universi-ty and Singapore University of Technology and Design in 2009 and 2011,respectively. His current research interests include cooperative communica-tions, cognitive radio networks, green communications, physical layer securi-ty, massive MIMO, cross-layer design, mmWave communications, andlocalization for radios and networks. He has been a TPC chair for severalIEEE international conferences and workshops, including most recently theIEEE GLOBECOM 13 Workshop on Trusted Communications with PhysicalLayer Security. He currently serves as an Editor for IEEE Communications Let-ters and Wiley Transactions on Emerging Telecommunications Technologies.He served as Lead Guest Editor of the Special Issue on Location Awarenessfor Radios and Networks of the IEEE Journal on Selected Areas in Communi-cations, Lead Guest Editor of the Special Issue on Secure Physical LayerCommunications of IET Communications, Guest Editor of the Special Issueon Green Media: Toward Bringing the Gap between Wireless and VisualNetworks of IEEE Wireless Communications, Guest Editor of the Special Issueon Millimeter Wave Communications for 5G of IEEE Communications Maga-zine, Guest Editor of the Special Issue on Cooperative Cognitive Networks ofthe EURASIP Journal on Wireless Communications and Networking, andGuest Editor of the Special Issue on Security Challenges and Issues in Cogni-tive Radio Networks of the EURASIP Journal on Advances Signal Processing.He was awarded the Best Paper Award at IEEE VTC-Spring 13 and theExemplary Reviewer Certificate of IEEE Communications Letters in 2012.

LEI SHU [M] received his B.Sc. degree in computer science from South Cen-tral University for Nationalities, China, in 2002, his M.Sc. degree in comput-er engineering from Kyung Hee University, Korea, in 2005, and his Ph.D.degree from the Digital Enterprise Research Institute, National University ofIreland, Galway, Ireland, in 2010. Until March 2012, he was a speciallyassigned researcher in the Department of Multimedia Engineering, Gradu-ate School of Information Science and Technology, Osaka University, Japan.He is a member of IEEE IES, IEEE ComSoc, EAI, and ACM. In October 2012,he joined Guangdong University of Petrochemical Technology, China, as afull professor. In 2013, he started to serve Dalian University of Technologyas a Ph.D. supervisor in the College of Software, Beijing University of Postsand Telecommunications as a Masters supervisor in information and com-munication engineering, Wuhan University as a Masters supervisor in theCollege of Computer Science, guest professor at Tianjin University of Sci-ence and Technology, and a guest researcher at Guangzhou Institute ofAdvanced Technology, Chinese Academy of Sciences. Meanwhile, he is alsoworking as vice-director of the Guangdong Provincial Key Laboratory ofPetrochemical Equipment Fault Diagnosis, China. He is the founder of theIndustrial Security and Wireless Sensor Networks Lab. HIs research interestsinclude wireless sensor networks, multimedia communication, middleware,fault diagnosis, and security. He has published over 230 papers in relatedconferences, journals, and books in the area of sensor networks. Currently,his H-index is 21 in Google Citation. Total citations of his papers by otherpeople are more than 1600. He developed an open source wireless sensornetworks simulator, NetTopo, to evaluate and demonstrate algorithms.NetTopo has been downloaded more than 3420 times over the past threeyears, and is widely used by international researchers and students. He wasawarded the MASS 2009 IEEE TCs Travel Grant and the Outstanding Lead-ership Award of EUC 2009 as Publicity Chair, GLOBECOM 2010, and ICC2013, the ComManTel 2014 Best Paper Award, and the Outstanding Ser-vice Award of IUCC 2012 and ComcomAP 2014. He also received a fewmore awards from the Chinese government: Top Level Talents in SailingPlan of Guangdong Province, China, and Outstanding Young Professor ofGuangdong Province, China. He has been serving as Editor-in-Chief for EAIEndorsed Transactions on Industrial Networks and Intelligent Systems, andAssociate Editor for IEEE Access, ACM/Springer Wireless Networks, Journalof Network and Computer Applications, Transactions on EmergingTelecommunications Technology, and several other publications. He hasserved as Co-Chair for many international conferences. He has obtainedmore than 4 million RMB in research grants since October 2012.

FRANK SCHMIDT is a pioneer in energy harvesting and the visionary in themanagement team of EnOcean. As chief technology officer he is responsi-ble for the overall technical orientation, patent related activities, as well asthe relationship management with educational, research and scientificorganizations. Before joining EnOcean he was at the Central ResearchDepartment of Siemens AG, where he created self-powered wireless sensortechnology as early as 1995. He has been granted more than 40 patentsfor his energy harvesting inventions and is the author of numerous techni-cal publications in this field. He is a physicist and studied at the TechnicalUniversity of Chemnitz, Germany.

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