Refined Nonlinear Rectenna Modeling and Optimal Waveform Design for Multi-User Multi-Antenna Wireless Power Transfer

In this paper, we study the optimal waveform design for wireless power transfer (WPT) from a multi-antenna energy transmitter (ET) to multiple single-antenna energy receivers (ERs) simultaneously in multi-path frequency-selective channels. First, we propose a refined nonlinear current-voltage model of the diode in the ER rectifier, and accordingly derive new expressions for the output direct current (DC) voltage and corresponding harvested power at the ER. Leveraging this new rectenna model, we first consider the single-ER case and study the multisine-based power waveform design based on the wireless channel to maximize the harvested power at the ER. We propose two efficient algorithms for finding high-quality suboptimal solutions to this non-convex optimization problem. Next, we extend our formulated waveform design problem to the general multi-ER case for maximizing the weighted sum of the harvested powers by all ERs, and propose an efficient difference-of-convex-functions programming (DCP)-based algorithm for solving this problem. Finally, we demonstrate the superior performance of our proposed waveform designs based on the new rectenna model over existing schemes/models via simulations.