Wireless Powered Wearables Using Distributed Massive MIMO

This paper presents an analytical framework which lays the foundation for distributed massive multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) supported wireless power transfer for wearable devices. In our approach, we consider multiple users, each wearing a number of wireless sensors along with one body worn hub which acts as a relay to forward information from the on-body sensors to nearby access points (APs). Each AP is equipped with a large number of antennas and is not only responsible for receiving data sent from the hubs, but also supplying wireless power to them. Interaction between hubs and APs is not exclusive to a single pairing, with APs assigned to supply energy to and receive data from more than one hub. More precisely, APs perform the downlink energy transmission and the uplink data transmission using maximum-ratio combining. Analytical approximations of the outage probability and spectral efficiency are derived. Based on these analytical results, two modes of operation are investigated. These are outage probability prioritized and spectral efficiency prioritized . For each mode, max-min power controls are proposed to ensure a uniformly good service throughout the area of coverage. By contrasting with the IEEE 802.15.6 standard, the numerical results illustrate that while using collocated massive MIMO may provide unsatisfactory performance, the distributed setting shows much promise for enabling wireless power transfer for wearable devices.