A brief review of Distributed energy beamforming in WPT systems
Abstract— Wireless power transfer (WPT) is a promising
new solution to provide convenient and perpetual energy
supplies to wireless networks. In practice, WPT is
implementable by various technologies such as inductive
coupling, magnetic resonate coupling, and electromagnetic
(EM) radiation, for short-/mid-/long-range applications,
respectively. In this review we mainly focus on EM radiation
for long range applications. In order to improve the energy
harvesting capability, energybeamforming has recently drawn
significant research attention, where we can direct the majority
of transmit signal energy to a particular set of receivers. In this
review we briefly talk about energybeamforming techniques
and compare two form of beamforming, conventional
beamforming and distributed beamforming and at the end the
average beam pattern for a random array is presented.
Keywords__ WPT, beamforming, distributed beamforming,
antenna array
I. INTRODUCTION
W ith recent advancements in both size and power
efficient computing, the concept of the ubiquitous
wireless sensor network has quickly emerged as a legitimate
research topic. It is now possible to have a large network of
relatively small devices distributed over a large area, all with
limited means of communications, and precious little power
to spare for long haul links. In an effort to further reduce
power consumption, the use of distributed phased arrays has
come into focus as a method for nodes to collaborate in their
transmissions, saving power overall during the data transfer.
By cooperating, the nodes are able to emulate a traditional
fixed array of antenna elements and achieve the same gains
in terms of main lobe enhancement, side lobe reduction, and
null pointing to improve the intended receiver’s SNR and
remove the interference caused by unwanted transmitters.
These arrays are called distributed smart antennas, or
distributed beamformers, and have their own unique set of
problems over fixed beamformers when it comes to ideal
weight calculations.
Use of the term “distributed” has two distinct meanings in
the sense of distributed beamforming. The first meaning
indicates that the antennas of the array themselves are
distributed over the receiving plane in some randomly
structured fashion. This is a departure from traditional
beamforming literature, which relies on a strict, uniform
placement of the antenna elements to reduce the complexity
of the analysis through the removal of dependence on the
individual locations of nodes within the arrays. When the
nodes are no longer structured so nicely, the location of each
element must be considered on its own, rather than simply
considering the location of the array as a whole. In this
scenario, the elements are still controlled by some central
source; hence the locations, phase offsets, and transmit
capabilities of each node are known quantities to be taken
advantage of during ideal weight calculations. The second
meaning builds on the first, implying that the elements are
not only distributed in terms of location, but are also
independent processing units, such as with a wireless sensor
network in a field. This second scenario severely limits the
quantity and quality of information available to a
beamformer. In this case, methods for determining ideal
complex weights must have distributed in the sense that they
can be carried out by each node individually without sharing
significant amounts of information. If the nodes were
allowed to share the total amount of information about
themselves, such as through some pre-communication phase,
the second scenario would collapse into the first, where ideal
weights could be calculated based on the global information
and disseminated through the network by a single cluster
head.
Due to the nature of original phased array systems, the
concept of a distributed phased array was not something that
was inherently obvious. As the topic grew from sonar and
acoustics into the electromagnetic domain, it was seen as a
given that arrays could be placed in specific patterns as
dictated by a designer, there was just no need to analyze
distributed or random arrays. There was a small body of
work, however, that focused on the properties of both non-
uniform and random linear arrays; usually with the intention
of decreasing the number of required elements, eliminating
the need for individual amplitude control hardware, or
analyzing the effects of placement errors when building a
physical array. The first attempts at moving away from a
strict linear array was presented in [1], which introduces the
idea that elements in a linear phased array need not be evenly
distributed over the length of the antenna. The main goal was
the reduction of the number of elements, the author
demonstrated that by placing the elements at arbitrary points
along the line the designer increases the degrees of freedom
in the overall design because through the addition of
location. The extra degrees of freedom allow for an increase
in the capabilities of the array (while necessarily increasing
the complexity of design). To reduce this complexity, [2]
introduced the concept of an equivalent uniformly-spaced
array (EUA), which reduces the non-uniform array to an
equivalently driven uniform array with a chosen spacing.
II. SYSTEM MODEL AND BEAMPATTERN
The geometrical configuration of the distributed Power
beacons and destination (or target) is illustrated in Fig. 1
where, without loss of generality, all the collaborative sensor
nodes are assumed to be located on the x-y plane. The kth
 1 N j 2 rk [sin0 cos(0 , k )sin cos(  k )
F (  r , )  e
N k 1
(5)
If we assume that the destination node is in the same
plane as the collaborative power beacons. Therefore,

 = 0 = for the rest of the calculation. Thus, the
2
probability density functions (pdfs) of rk and  k are given by
Fig 1. Definitions of notation

node location is thus denoted in polar coordinates by 2r 1

(rk, ѱk). The location of the destination is given in spherical
f rk (r )  and f k  (6)
R2 2
coordinates by (A, φ0, θ0). Following the standard notation in

antenna theory [3], the angle θ ∈ [0, π] denotes the elevation From (5) we have (with  = 0 = )
direction, whereas the angle φ ∈ [−π, π] represents the 2
 
azimuth direction. In order to simplify the analysis, the 1 N j 4 R rk sin( 02 ) rk sin( k )
following assumptions are made: F (  r , )   e (7)
1) The location of each node is chosen randomly,
N k 1
following a uniform distribution within a disk of radius R. rk  
Where rK and  k  k  0 .
2) Each node is equipped with a single ideal isotropic R 2
antenna.
3) All sensor nodes transmit identical energies, and the The compound random variable
path losses of all nodes are also identical. Thus the
underlying model falls within the framework of phased zk rk sin k (8)
arrays.
Furthermore, we also assume that all the nodes are perfectly has the following pdf:
synchronized so that no frequency offset or phase jitter 2
occurs. Let dk(φ, θ) denote the Euclidean distance between f zk ( z )  1 z2 1  z  1 (9)
the kth node and the reference location (A, φ, θ), which is 
written as
We assume that  0 = 0, and the parameter  simply
dk ( , )  A2  rk2  2 A sin  cos(  k ) (1)
corresponds to the difference angle between the target
If the initial phase of node k ∈ {1, 2, . . ., N} is set to direction and the reference. The array factor of (7) can
2
k   d k (0 0 ) (2) then be rewritten as
 1 N  j 4 sin( 2 ) zk R
the corresponding array factor, given the realization of node F (  z )  e
N k 1
(10)
locations r = [r1, r2 ,…., rN] ∈ [0, R]N and
  [ 1 , 2 ,...., N ] ∈ [−π, π]N, is written as
R
Where R is the radius of the disk normalized by the

2 wavelength.
1 N j dk ( , ) 1 N j 2 [ dk ( )dk (0 0 )]
F (  r , )   e j k e   e 
2

N k 1 N k 1 P(  z ) F (  z )  F (  z ) F  (  z )
(3) N N 
1  j 4 R sin( )( zk  zl ) 1 1 N  j ( ) zk N j ( ) zl
The far-field distance dk(  ,  ) in (1) can then be 
N
 e
k 1 l 1
2
  2 e
N N k 1
l 1
e
approximated as
(11)
dk(  ,  ) ≈ A  rk sin  cos(  k ) . (4)

Where  ( ) 4 R sin( ) (12)
The far-field beampattern is thus approximated by: 2
The average beampattern is expressed as

Pav ( ) EZ {P(  z )} (13)

From (11) and (13) it can be readily shown that

2
1 1 J ( ( ))
Pav ( )   (1  ) 2. 1 , (14)
N N  ( )
Where Jn(x) is the nth order Bessel function of the
first kind.

REFERENCES
[1] H. Unz, “Linear arrays with arbitrarily distributed elements”, IRE
Trans. Anten. Propag., vol. 8, no. 2, pp. 222–223. 1960.
[2] S. Sandler, “Some equivalences between equally and unequally
spaced arrays”, IRE Trans. Anten. Propag., vol. 8, no. 5, pp.
496-500, 1960.
[3] C. A. Balanis, Antenna Theory: Analysis and Design. New York:
Wiley,1997