RF energy harvesting: an analysis of wireless sensor networks for reliable communication

In this paper, we consider a wireless energy harvesting network consisting of one hybrid access point (HAP) having multiple antennas, and multiple sensor nodes each equipped with a single antenna. In contrast to conventional uplink wireless networks, the sensor nodes in the considered network have no embedded energy supply. They need to recharge the energy from the wireless signals broadcasted by the HAP in order to communicate. Based on the point-to-point and multipoints-to-point model, we propose two medium access control protocols, namely harvesting at the header of timeslot (HHT) and harvesting at the dedicated timeslot (HDT), in which the sensor nodes harvest energy from the HAP in the downlink, and then transform its stored packet into bit streams to send to the HAP in the uplink. Considering a deadline for each packet, the cumulative distribution functions of packet transmission time of the proposed protocols are derived for the selection combining and maximal ratio combining (MRC) techniques at the HAP. Subsequently, analytical expressions for the packet timeout probability and system reliability are obtained to analyze the performance of proposed protocols. Analytical results are validated by numerical simulations. The impacts of the system parameters, such as energy harvesting efficiency coefficient, sensor positions, transmit signal-to-noise ratio, and the length of energy harvesting time on the packet timeout probability and the system reliability are extensively investigated. Our results show that the performance of the HDT protocol outperforms the one using the HHT protocol, and the HDT protocol with the MRC technique has the best performance and it can be a potential solution to enhance the reliability for wireless sensor networks.