Simultaneous wireless information and power transfer based on generalized triangular decomposition

In this paper, a new approach, based on the generalized triangular decomposition (GTD), is proposed for simultaneous wireless information and power transfer (SWIPT) in the spatial domain for a point-to-point multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) system. The proposed approach takes advantage of the GTD structure to allow the transmitter to use the strongest eigenchannel jointly for energy harvesting and information exchange while these transmissions can be separated at the receiver. The optimal structure of the GTD that maximizes the total information rate constrained by a given power allocation and a required amount of energy harvesting is derived. An algorithm is developed that minimizes the total transmitted power for given information rate and energy harvesting constraints with a limited total power at the transmitter. Both theoretical and simulation results show that our proposed GTD based SWIPT outperforms singular value decomposition (SVD) based SWIPT. This is due to the flexibility introduced by the GTD to increase the energy harvested via interstream interference.