System Performance Analysis of Sensor Networks for RF Energy Harvesting and Information Transmission

Abstract

This paper investigates the problem of RF energy harvesting in wireless sensor networks, with the aim of finding a suitable communication protocol by comparing the performance of the system under different protocols. The network is made up of two parts: first, at the beginning of each timeslot, the sensor nodes harvest energy from the base station (BS) and then send packets to the BS using the harvested energy. For the energy-harvesting part of the wireless sensor network, we consider two methods: point-to-point and multi-point-to-point energy harvesting. For each method, we use two independent control protocols, namely head harvesting energy of each timeslot (HHT) and head harvesting energy of dedicated timeslot (HDT). Additionally, for complex channel states, we derive the cumulative distribution function (CDF) of packet transmission time using selective combining (SC) and maximum ratio combining (MRC) techniques. Analytical expressions for system reliability and packet timeout probability are obtained. At the same time, we also utilize the Monte Carlo simulation method to simulate our system and have analyzed both the numerical and simulation solutions. Results show that the performance of the HHT protocol is better than that of the HDT protocol, and the MRC technology outperforms the SC technology for the HHT protocol in terms of the energy-harvesting efficiency coefficient, sensor positions, transmit signal-to-noise ratio (SNR), and length of energy harvesting time.