Index Modulation-based Information Harvesting for Far-Field RF Power Transfer

As wireless information transmission (WIT) progresses into its sixth generation (6G), a challenge arises in sustaining terminal operations with limited batteries for Internet-of-Things (IoT) platforms. To address this, wireless power transfer (WPT) emerges as a solution, empowering battery-less infrastructures and enabling nodes to harvest energy for sustainable operations. Thus, the eclectic integration of WPT with WIT mechanisms becomes crucial to mitigate the need for battery replacements while providing secure and reliable communication. A novel protocol that amalgamates WIT and WPT called Information Harvesting (IH) has recently been proposed to effectively handle challenges in wireless information and power transfer (WIPT) by employing index modulation (IM) techniques for data communication atop the existing far-field WPT mechanism. This paper presents a unified framework for IM-based IH mechanisms and evaluates their energy harvesting capability, bit error rate (BER), and ergodic secrecy rate (ESR) performance for diverse IM schemes. The findings indicate the significant potential of the IM-based IH mechanism in facilitating reliable data communication within existing far-field WPT systems while underscoring promising refinements in green and secure communication paradigms for next-generation IoT wireless networks.