Tri-hybrid antenna design improves wireless power and data transfer performance
Tri-Hybrid SWIPT with Reconfigurable Parasitic Antennas
Information Theory
Summary
Wireless devices often need to send information and power at the same time, but this can be tricky because antennas don’t always work perfectly together. The authors developed a new way to control antennas that carefully considers how they interact and store energy. Their method uses a clever mix of techniques to make antenna arrays work better, improving both data rates and wireless power transfer efficiency. This approach also costs less in hardware compared to some earlier methods.
What this means in practice
- •For wireless communication engineers: Design antenna arrays that improve both wireless data and power transfer using coupling-aware precoding.
- •For iot device designers: Build energy-efficient devices that harvest more power from wireless signals while maintaining reliable communication.
Authors
Thien Duc Hua, Mohammadali Mohammadi, Hien Quoc Ngo, Michail Matthaiou
Abstract
We propose a coupling-aware tri-hybrid precoding architecture for simultaneous wireless information and power transfer (SWIPT) using reconfigurable parasitic antennas. By integrating multiport network theory and information theory, we develop a third precoding layer that explicitly accounts for mutual coupling and reactive energy storage within the antenna domain. To efficiently optimize this architecture, we propose a low-complexity tri-hybrid solution comprising coordinate descent (CD) for parasitic reactive load optimization, a singular value decomposition (SVD)-based analog precoder, and a protective partial zero-forcing (PPZF) digital precoder. Numerical results demonstrate that the transmit array introduces impedance mismatch that reduces the real power accepted by the antenna array. Moreover, the proposed tri-hybrid architecture significantly outperforms hybrid precoding by constructively exploiting the coupling effects, yielding substantial gains in spectral efficiency (SE) and sum non-linear harvested energy (NLHE) at a fraction of the hardware cost.