Wireless Energy Beamforming using Received Signal Strength Indicator Feedback

Multiple antenna techniques that allow energy beamforming have been looked upon as a possible candidate for increasing the transfer efficiency between the energy transmitter (ET) and the energy receiver (ER) in wireless power transfer. This paper introduces a novel scheme that facilitates energy beamforming by utilizing Received Signal Strength Indicator (RSSI) values to estimate the channel. Firstly, in the training stage, the ET will transmit using each beamforming vector in a codebook, which is pre-defined using a Cramer-Rao lower bound analysis. RSSI value corresponding to each beamforming vector is fed back to the ET, and these values are used to estimate the channel through a maximum likelihood analysis. The results that are obtained are remarkably simple, requires minimal processing, and can be easily implemented. The paper also validates the analytical results numerically, as well as experimentally, and it is shown that the proposed method achieves impressive results.