Sum-rate maximization methods for wirelessly powered communication networks in interference channels

In this paper, we study a wireless powered communication network (WPCN) in a general N-user interference channel (IFC), where a hybrid access-point (H-AP) in each cell supports its corresponding user. In this multi-cell environment, the H-AP first sends the energy signal to charge users in the downlink (DL) phase, while in the subsequent uplink (UL) phase, each user transmits its information signal to the corresponding H-AP utilizing the previously harvested energy. For the WPCN in this IFC scenario, cross-link interference occurs due to asynchronous time allocation of the DL and the UL among N cells which significantly affects the overall performance. To handle the interference issue efficiently, we jointly optimize the DL and UL time allocation of each cell as well as the transmit power allocation at the H-APs and the users so that the weighted sum-rate of UL information transmission is maximized. To tackle non-convexity of the weighted sum-rate maximization problem, we propose an iterative algorithm where the time allocation and the transmit power are updated based on the weighted minimum mean square error criteria and the gradient projection method, respectively. Furthermore, we consider two simple protocols where the DL time allocation of each cell is synchronized and present resource allocation method, respectively. In simulation results, we verify that the proposed algorithm for the asynchronous protocol outperforms conventional schemes.