Power Efficient and Secure Multiuser Communication Systems with Wireless Information and Power Transfer

Abstract: In this paper, we study resource allocation algorithm design for power efficient secure communication with simultaneous wireless information and power transfer (WIPT) in multiuser communication systems. In particular, we focus on power splitting receivers which are able to harvest energy and decode information from the received signals. The considered problem is modeled as an optimization problem which takes into account a minimum required signal-to-interference-plus-noise ratio (SINR) at multiple desired receivers, a maximum tolerable data rate at multiple multi-antenna potential eavesdroppers, and a minimum required power delivered to the receivers. The proposed problem formulation facilitates the dual use of artificial noise in providing efficient energy transfer and guaranteeing secure communication. We aim at minimizing the total transmit power by jointly optimizing transmit beamforming vectors, power splitting ratios at the desired receivers, and the covariance of the artificial noise. The resulting non-convex optimization problem is transformed into a semidefinite programming (SDP) and solved by SDP relaxation. We show that the adopted SDP relaxation is tight and achieves the global optimum of the original problem. Simulation results illustrate the significant power saving obtained by the proposed optimal algorithm compared to suboptimal baseline schemes.