Antenna Coding Optimization Based on Pixel Antennas for MIMO Wireless Power Transfer with DC Combining

Abstract: This paper investigates antenna coding based on pixel antennas as a new degree of freedom for enhancing multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) wireless power transfer (WPT) systems. Antenna coding is closely related to the Fluid Antenna System (FAS) concept and further generalizes the radiation pattern reconfigurability. We first introduce a beamspace channel model to demonstrate reconfigurable radiation patterns enabled by antenna coders. By jointly optimizing the antenna coding and transmit beamforming with perfect channel state information (CSI), we exploit gains from antenna coding, transmit beamforming, and rectenna nonlinearity to maximize the output DC power. We adopt an alternating optimization approach with the quasi-Newton method and Successive Exhaustive Boolean Optimization (SEBO) method with warm-start to handle the transmit beamforming design and antenna coding design respectively. Finally, simulation results show that the proposed MIMO WPT system with pixel antennas achieves up to 15 dB gain in average output DC power compared with a conventional system with fixed antenna configuration, highlighting the potential of pixel antennas for boosting the WPT efficiency.