Study of Distributed Beamforming for Wireless Power Transfer in Presence of RF Impairments

For an equivalent performance (sensitivity, communication range, computational capability, etc.), the energy efficiency of connected devices is continuously increasing. Providing the energy for such objects by the means of electromagnetic waves (wireless power transfer) becomes a feasible option in various scenarios, especially those in which the use of conventional energy resources (e.g. batteries) is unfeasible.This paper tackles a particular method of wireless power transfer, which is the distributed beamforming, i. e. the use of several sources, spatially distributed and which are coordinating together in order to maximize the power of the electromagnetic field in a particular location. Through simulation results, this paper highlights the robustness of this approach to different nonidealities, i.e. frequency and phase synthesis, phase noise and channel characteristics. A first experimental setup is also presented.