Internet of Things Networks: Enabling Simultaneous Wireless Information and Power Transfer

The number of sensors deployed in the world is expected to explode in the near future. At this moment, nearly 30 billion Internet of Things (IoT) devices are connected, and the number is expected to double in the next four years. While not all of these are battery powered, as technology becomes smaller and mobility becomes more important to consumers, soon a larger portion will be. This forecast predicts that the number of machine-to-machine devices will have the largest increase, representing nearly 50% of all devices in 2023 [1] , [2] . These devices are typically small and therefore ideal candidates to be wirelessly powered. Typical examples are health-care monitoring, smart homes, and industrial applications.