Joint Tx Power Allocation and Rx Power Splitting for SWIPT System with Multiple Nonlinear Energy Harvesting Circuits

We study the joint transmit (Tx) power allocation and receive (Rx) power splitting for simultaneous wireless information and power transfer (SWIPT). Considering the practical scenario of nonlinear energy harvesting (EH), we adopt the realistic nonlinear EH model for analysis. To address the critical nonlinearity issue due to the saturation, we propose to use multiple EH circuits in parallel. An important problem is to maximize the achievable rate by jointly optimizing Tx power allocation and Rx power splitting, which is a nonconvex problem. In this paper, we first derive the optimal solution for any number of EH circuits. Then we study how the number of EH circuits required to avoid the saturation should be determined. From the obtained results, we draw useful and interesting insights into the SWIPT system with nonlinear EH. Numerical results demonstrate that employing multiple EH circuits substantially enhances the SWIPT performance with nonlinear EH.