Impact of Varying Radio Power Density on Wireless Communications of RF Energy Harvesting Systems

Through field experiments, we observed a varying instantaneous charging capacity of the energy buffer with respect to the dynamic intensity of the incident RF signal in the RF energy harvesting system (RF-EHS). The dependency of charging capacity on the incident power of RF signal challenges existing RF energy harvesting models that assume constant charging capacity. In order to accurately describe the energy harvesting process in the real system, we propose a new energy clamp model. The new model reveals that RF intensity higher than the sensitivity of the harvester circuit cannot always guarantee successful energy reception, especially when the energy level of energy buffer is high while the intensity of the incident power is relatively weak. In order to improve the efficiencies of energy harvest and energy utilization in an RF-EHS, we develop new offline (i.e., non-causal) optimal and online (i.e., causal) suboptimal data transmission strategies based on the energy clamp model. Simulation results show that the new strategy can considerably improve the throughput after taking into account the varying instantaneous charging capacity caused by the dynamic RF power density in the air.