On Supporting Legacy and RF-Energy Harvesting Devices in Multi-Cells OFDMA Systems

Abstract

This paper studies a multi-cell network that uses orthogonal Frequency Division Multiple Access (OFDMA). Unlike prior works, our network consists of {\em both} (i) legacy data users that do not have energy harvesting capability and have a minimum data rate requirement, and (ii) Radio Frequency (RF)-energy harvesting devices with a minimum energy requirement. It studies sub-band allocation ot users and transmit power allocation at base stations. We formulate a Mixed Integer Non Linear Program (MINLP) and also present two heuristics to assign sub-band to base stations. Numerical results show that RF energy harvesting devices will not affect network capacity if legacy data users require a high data rate. In addition, the results obtained from the two heuristics are approximately 95% that of the optimal solution.