Energy Harvesting using Cyclic Prefixed OFDMA
Prerna Dhull Anshul Tyagi
Dept. of Electronics and
Communication Engineering
Indian Institute of Technology, Roorkee
Email: prernadhull@gmail.com
Abstract—In this work, a self-sustainable transmission ap-
proach for orthogonal frequency division multiple access
(OFDMA) receiver is considered, to extend the battery life of
the receiver. This is achieved by exploiting the redundant part
of OFDMA block structure, that is, cyclic prefix (CP). The self-
sustainability level is analyzed by considering the effect of power
budget at the transmitter, the power consumed by the receiver,
distance-dependent path loss and shadowing. It is shown that how
the number of users within a cell affects the self-sustainability
performance. Simulations prove that it is possible to have a fully
self-sustainable transmission under certain conditions (depending
upon the cell radius and the number of users).
Index Terms – Self-sustainable, Energy Harvesting, OFDMA.
I. I NTRODUCTION
In wireless systems, power needed for signal processing
of received signal is provided by battery and, the life of the
battery restricts the receiver performance. One way of solving
this problem is, we can increase the size of battery, but by
this, the device portability and its market value reduce. As,
this is not a practical solution, so some newer techniques
have become popular to get, the more sustainable battery. One
of the most popular approaches is to use energy harvesting
circuits at receiver which are capable of scavenging energy
from vibrations, light, heat and so on.
In wireless communication, mainly RF signals are used for
transmitting information. A possible way of increasing receiver
battery is to extract energy from these RF signals and use it
for powering mobile electronics and sensor networks. At first,
Varshney [1] gave the idea of simultaneous transmission of
energy and information in a wireless system in which trade-
off between reliable information and energy over a noisy line
for wireless sensor networks, RFID systems and multi-antenna
systems were studied. A coding theorem and capacity-energy
function was given. A non-trivial tradeoff for the energy and
the information transfer for the frequency-selective channels
with AWGN is proposed [2].
Wireless information and power transfer in the presence of
co-channel interference was studied in [3], [4]. In this, it was
shown that interference which is an undesired factor, can be
used for energy harvesting. In practical circuits, if we are
extracting energy then it is not possible to decode the in-
formation simultaneously. Receiver design must be optimized
for wireless power transfer as, at the receiver, wireless power
transfer and wireless information transfer occur at different
978-1-5090-6367-3/17/$31.00 ©2017 IEEE 1335
Dept. of Electronics and
Communication Engineering
Indian Institute of Technology, Roorkee
Email: tyagifec@iitr.ac.in
power sensitivities (i.e. -60dbm for information transfer and -
10dbm for power transfer). Further, a dynamic power splitting
approach [3] at receiver with two cases, time switching and
power splitting, is given where received signal is divided into
two streams with different power levels, one for information
decoding and other for energy harvesting purposes. In [5],
two receiver architectures, one is separated and other one is
integrated, are given and analysis of the rate-energy region is
done. In energy receiver, RF to DC conversion is done using
a rectifier.
OFDMA block contains a redundant cyclic prefix (CP)
which is used to eliminate inter-block interference and inter-
carrier interference (IBI and ICI, respectively) [6]. Conven-
tionally, it is simply removed at the receiver. However, if an
energy harvesting unit is used to retrieve the CP at the receiver
and extract energy from it, then spectral efficiency loss at
transmitter can be exploited as an advantage for receiver in
terms of power [7]. By this way, the receiver can get informa-
tion and power from the same OFDMA transmission. Under
certain conditions, even fully self-sustainable transmission can
be achieved. Here in this approach, time switching or power
splitting at receiver front-end need not to apply as was needed
for the dynamic power splitting approach. So, now we don’t
have any need to calculate power/time splitting ratio depending
upon its state to maximize the amount of the information
and/or the amount of energy transferred to the receiver using
algorithms. In OFDM transmission, once CP position in every
OFDM block is obtained using timing synchronization at the
frame level, there will be no need of further synchronization.
II. E NERGY H ARVESTING R ECEIVER
Assume, a down-link system with M user terminals (UT)
each having only one antenna and an access point (AP).
Communication can be in frequency division or time division
duplexing i.e. any duplexing mode can be used. Consider
a frequency-selective Rayleigh fading channel vector hi =
[hi,0 , ..., hi,l ] of l + 1 independent and identically distributed
taps, for i ∈ [1, M ], hi ∼ CN (0, Il+1 /(l + 1)).
Let N be the set of sub-carriers with Si sub-carriers are
allocated to ith UT, Si ⊂ N and size of CP be L. So in time
domain, every OFDMA block contains N + L samples.
Let the input vector (information symbols) be s =
[s1 , ...sN ]> ∼ CN (0, P) at the AP. P = d(p) = E[ssH ] ∈
RN ×N , where p = [pi , ...pN ]> is a vector of size N which is
containing power of each symbol such that pi = si s∗i ∈ R0+ .
Fig. 1. Energy Harvesting OFDM Receiver
where Q ∈ RL×(N +L) and qi = Qyi ∈ C L is the
retrieved CP. The rest of digital signal processing for decoding
information is same as in the general OFDM receiver.
A. Self-sustainable transmission
Let β represent the efficiency of energy harvester block and
β ∈ [0, 1] because of the law of conservation of energy. Let
the total power transmitted by the considered AP is PT and
the power consumed in signal processing of N information
symbols OFDMA block be Pd per receiver. Further, it is shown
that, we can achieve full or partial self-sustainable OFDMA
transmission if some feasibility conditions are met.
In every wireless system, first preference is to maximize the
transmission rate, so the rate maximization problem for this
system is considered and can be expressed as

At the transmitter, we need IDFT operation and CP insertion min L

L∈N
operation for the generation of OFDM symbol. We can per-
form these operations using matrices. Let F be a DFT matrix such that
(unitary) expressed as
M
1 jk
X
[F](j+1,k+1) = √ e−i2π N βtr[QHj AFH PFAH HH H
j Q ] − δM Pd ≥ 0,
N j
∀j, k = (0, ..., N − 1) and 1 (2)
tr[P] − PT ≤ 0,
  Γ
0L,N −L IL
A= L ≥ l,
IN
pi ≥ 0, ∀i ∈ [1, N ]
be CP insertion matrix.
Therefore, we can get transmit signal x = where δ ∈ R0+ is a scaling factor representing self-
[x1 , · · · , xN +L ]> ∈ C N +L , at the AP using these matrices, sustainability level, i.e., full (δ ≥ 1) or partial (0 ≤ δ < 1).
The above N + 3 constraints can be rewritten as
x = AF−1 s N M
X X δ
pi ( ||gj,i ||2 ) − M Pd ≥ 0,
where F ∈ C N ×N and A ∈ R(N +L)×N . β
i=1 j=1
Therefore,the received signal yi ∈ C N +L at the UT is given
N
by 1X (3)
− pi + PT ≥ 0,
Γ i=1
yi = Hi AF−1 s + ni ,
L − l ≥ 0,
where ni = [ni,1 , · · · , ni,N +L ]T ∼ CN (0, σ 2 IN +L ) is pi ≥ 0, ∀i ∈ [1, N ]
an additive white Gaussian noise (AWGN) vector, with
E[ni,k n∗i,k ] = σ 2 , and where Gi = QHi AF H = [gi,1 , gi,2 , · · · gi,N ] ∈ C L×N . Set
of inequalities given in (3) is an over-determined system. So,

hi,0 0 ··· 0 hi,l ··· hi,1
 after solving this system using Fourier Motzkin Elimination
 .. .. .. .. .. .. ..  (FME) algorithm [7], [8], the necessary and sufficient condi-
 . . . . . . .  tion for the existence of a solution for constraints in (2) and
 ..
 
.. .. .. .. ..  is given as
 .
 . . . . . hi,l 

Hi =  hi,l
 ··· ··· hi,0 0 ··· 0  M
X ζβ
l ≤ N ( max ||gj,i ||2 − 1) (4)

 .. .. .. .. .. .. 
 0 . . . . . .  i∈[1,N ]
j=1
δM
 
 . .. .. .. .. ..
 ..

 . . . . . 0   and, ζ = PPTd ∈ R0+ gives the comparison of total transmitted
.. power budget and power consumed by one UT.
0 . 0 hi,1 ··· ··· hi,0
From (4), note that as the value of N increases, there are
is a Toeplitz matrix using which we can perform convolution more chances to satisfy this condition.
of channel with signals from AP to ith UT. At UT, for energy
harvesting purpose, CP can be retrieved using a matrix Q M
X δM
max ||gj,i ||2 ≥ (5)
Q = [IL 0L,N ], (1) i∈[1,N ]
j=1
ζβ

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represents the lowest value of the maximum equivalent channel
gain so that we can find a feasible CP size. In particular, if
we want a higher value of δ, then we will need a larger value
M
||gj,i ||2 in order to find a feasible CP length.
P
of max
i∈[1,N ] j=1
And one more conclusion can be made, as we increase
the number of users (M ), feasibility of the self-sustainability
decreases because of an increase in the lower bound of max
equivalent channel gain.
III. SIMULATIONS
According to the OFDM configuration
 9 for1 the LTE downlink
[9], let N ∈ {128, 256} and L ∈ [ 128 , 4 ]N . Here, we are
assuming frequency-selective Rayleigh fading channel vectors
of size l + 1 taps. As we need an AP which maximizes the
down-link rate, we will consider the case l = L because L
should be greater than l to remove ICI and IBI, and also
assume a perfect synchronization is achieved at the receiver.
At UT, the efficiency of the energy harvester element also
contributes, let take it as β = 0.5.

Fig. 3. Self-sustainability level with path loss and shadowing, M = 4, N =

256, cell radius = 4 km

sustainability level increases with CP size as well as ζ. This

Fig. 2. Self-sustainability level with path loss and shadowing, M = 4, N =
128, cell radius = 4 km
For a realistic implementation, practical values are con-
sidered for both Pd and PM , i.e., Pd = 500mW and
PM ∈ [1, 2.5]W . Parameter ζ gives information of both Pd
and PM . ζ will be used to represent the different system
configurations. ζ = PPMd , i.e. ζ ∈ [2, 5].
Here, distance-dependent path loss and shadowing (environ-
ment clutter) will be considered.
Here, we are considering outdoor environment, i.e. close-in
reference distance r0 be 1 km. Xσ = N (0, σ), where we are
taking σ as 8dB.
We simulate for self-sustainability level as shown in Fig. 2
for N = 128, cell of radius 4 km and 4 users. Note that self-
is directly from the fact that with the larger CP size, UT can
extract more energy from received signal. And as we increase
ζ, i.e. transmitter is transmitting more power so obviously self-
sustainability level increases. It can also be seen from (4).
Now, let N = 256 and plot as in Fig. 3. We can see that δ
is higher for N = 256. As N increases, the chances to satisfy
(4) increases because with more value of N , we will have
more chances to have sufficiently large value of max ||gi ||2
i∈[1,N ]
which satisfies (4).
Fig. 4 depicts δ for N = 128, cell of radius 4 km and
6 users. Note that δ is reduced from that in Fig. 2 all due
to increased number of users, and we see that with just an
increase of two users within same radius, self-sustainability
level for ζ = 2 decreases by approximately 20%.
Now, the maximum value of δ is plotted in Fig. 5 for
different number of users within a cell of radius 4 km. It is
seen that the maximum self-sustainability level decreases as
the number of users increases. This can be noted from (4), as
we increase the number of users M , the value of the lower
bound of maximum equivalent channel gain increases for a
fixed value of δ, ζ and β.
Variations in δ(max) for cells with different radius are
shown in Fig. 6 for N = 128 and M = 4. Path loss at a
distance r is
n

r
P L(r) ∝ .
r0
So as we increase the distance between AP and UT, path loss
increases resulting in decrease in self-sustainability level.

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Fig. 4. Self-sustainability level with path loss and shadowing, M = 6, N =
128, cell radius = 4 km
Fig. 5. Self-sustainability level as number of users grows, N = 128, radius =
4 km
Note that we can achieve full self-sustainability (δ ≥ 1)
with lower cell radius and we can further increase this by
increasing the number of sub-carriers i.e. N = 256.
IV. C ONCLUSION
In this paper, we discussed the energy harvesting OFDMA
receiver which exploits CP to extract power and gives a
wireless power transfer from transmitter to receiver. We have
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Fig. 6. Self-sustainability level as cell radius increases, for M = 4, N = 128
shown that it is possible to have a self-sustainable transmission
even with the presence of path loss and shadowing when some
parameters like CP size, power budget(ζ) are properly set.
We have shown that the level of self-sustainability increases
with CP size and decreases with the number of users. We
have also considered different cellular systems, i.e. cells with
different radius and have shown that the effect of path loss
and shadowing increases on self-sustainability of transmission
as the radius of the cell increases. The study of the effect
of channel state information accuracy at the transmitter, CP
retrieval block implementation of the receiver and RF amplifier
gains and antenna gain will be a matter of future research.
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