Information and Power Transfer by Energy Harvesting Transmitters over a Fading Multiple Access Channel with Minimum Rate Constraints

We consider the problem of Simultaneous Wireless Information and Power Transfer (SWIPT) over a fading multiple access channel with additive Gaussian noise. The transmitters as well as the receiver harvest energy from ambient sources. We assume that the transmitters have two classes of data to send, viz. delay sensitive and delay tolerant data. Each transmitter sends the delay sensitive data at a certain minimum rate irrespective of the channel conditions (fading states). In addition, if the channel conditions are good, the delay tolerant data is sent. Along with data, the transmitters also transfer power to aid the receiver in meeting its energy requirements. In this setting, we characterize the minimum-rate capacity region which provides the fundamental limit of transferring information and power simultaneously with minimum rate guarantees. Owing to the limitations of current technology, these limits might not be achievable in practice. Among the practical receiver structures proposed for SWIPT in literature, two popular architectures are the time switching and power splitting receivers. For each of these architectures, we derive the minimum-rate capacity regions. We show that power splitting receivers although more complex, provide a larger capacity region.