Integrated energy and spectrum harvesting for 5G wireless communications

Two important issues have arisen in 5G wireless communications: spectral efficiency and energy efficiency. The existing wireless communication architectures and technologies may not be able to address these two issues at the same time for 5G multi-tier networks where users in different tiers have different priorities for channel access. In this article, we first present the motivation for our proposal of a new paradigm of integrated spectrum and energy harvesting for 5G wireless networks, in which spectrum and energy resources are efficiently collected and intelligently managed. Then we present an integrated spectrum and energy harvesting 5G architecture for dealing with current challenges. After that, based on the proposed architecture, we provide integrated spectrum and energy control mechanisms for typical 5G networks. Finally, we propose a cooperative medium access control scheme for heterogeneous 5G networks that attracts cooperative sensing participants with heterogeneous energy harvesting capabilities. Illustrative results demonstrate significant energy and spectrum efficiency for 5G wireless networks.