Nikita Shanin is now a „Dr.-Ing.“

Our former colleague Nikita Shanin has taken the final step towards obtaining the degree of Dr.-Ing. On Friday, May 17, 2024, he successfully defended his dissertation entitled “Optimal Design of Communication Systems Based on Wireless Power Transfer with Non-linear Energy Harvesting”.

Nikita, who was supervised by both Prof. Cottatellucci and Prof. Schober, investigated and optimized methods of wirelessly transmitting energy to small sensors placed in remote locations or perhaps inside the human body to recharge their batteries.

Abstract of the thesis – The growing number of low-power wireless smart home and healthcare sensors has recently fuelled interest in the design of wireless sensor communication networks. Despite the notable progress in the development and optimisation of these networks, regular replacement or recharging of batteries of small low-power devices still remains an unsolved problem. Furthermore, in future, wireless sensors for healthcare will become microscopic and may be implanted in human bodies for cell imaging and drug delivery control, which makes the problem of efficient battery recharging even more challenging. In the dissertation, we tackle this problem and design wireless communication networks based on wireless power transfer, where electromagnetic signals are used not only to transfer information, but also to deliver power to small sensing devices. First, we show that the electrical circuits, which are typically utilised to harvest energy from the received electromagnetic signals, exhibit a non-linear and, sometimes, a non-monotonic behaviour. Next, taking into account the imperfections of practical energy harvesting circuits, we design optimal transmit energy signals and resource allocation schemes for GHz-band and THz-band communication networks based on wireless power transfer.