Secure and Energy-Efficient Beamforming for Simultaneous Information and Energy Transfer

Some next-generation wireless networks will likely involve the energy-efficient transfer of information and energy over the same wireless channel. Moreover, densification of such networks will make the physical layer more vulnerable to cyber attacks by potential multi-antenna eavesdroppers. To address these issues, this paper considers transmit time-switching (TS) mode, in which energy and information signals are transmitted separately in time by the base station (BS). This protocol is not only easy to implement but also delivers the opportunity for multi-purpose beamforming, in which energy beamformers can be used to jam eavesdroppers during wireless power transfer. In the presence of imperfect channel estimation and multi-antenna eavesdroppers, the energy and information beamformers and the transmit TS ratio are jointly optimized to maximize the worst-case user secrecy rate subject to energy constrained users’ harvested energy thresholds and a BS transmit power budget. New robust path-following algorithms, which involve one simple convex quadratic program at each iteration are proposed for computational solutions of this difficult optimization problem and also the problem of secure energy efficiency maximization. The latter adds further complexity due to additional optimization variables appearing in the denominator of the secrecy rate function. Numerical results confirm that the performance of the proposed computational solutions is robust against channel uncertainties.