Long-Range Optical Wireless Information and Power Transfer

Simultaneous wireless information and power transfer (SWIPT) is a remarkable technology to support data and energy transfer in the era of Internet of Things (IoT). In this paper, we propose a beam-compression resonant beam (BCRB) system for long-range optical wireless information and power transfer based on the telescope-like internal modulator (TIM). Utilizing the TIM, the resonant beam is compressed, making the transmission energy be further concentrated. Thus the over-the-air power loss produced by the beam diverged decreases, which enables the long-range SWIPT capability. We establish the analytical models of the transmission loss, the stability condition, the output power, and the spectral efficiency of the BCRB system, and evaluate the performance on the beam-compression, energy delivery, and data transfer. Numerical analysis illustrates that the exemplary BCRB system can deliver 6 W power and have 14 bit/s/Hz spectral efficiency over 200 m distance. Overall, the BCRB system is a potential scheme for long-range SWIPT in IoT.

High-Power and High-Capacity Mobile Optical SWIPT

The increasing demands of power supply and data rate for mobile devices promote the research of simultaneous information and power transfer (SWIPT). Optical SWIPT, as known as simultaneous light information and power transfer (SLIPT), can provide high-capacity communication and high-power charging. However, light emitting diodes (LEDs)-based SLIPT technologies have low efficiency due to energy dissipation over the air. Laser-based SLIPT technologies face the challenge in mobility, as it needs accurate positioning, fast beam steering, and real-time tracking. In this paper, we propose a mobile SLIPT scheme based on spatially separated laser resonator (SSLR) and intra-cavity second harmonic generation (SHG). The power and data are transferred via separated frequencies, while they share the same self-aligned resonant beam path, without the needs of receiver positioning and beam steering. We establish the analysis model of the resonant beam power and its second harmonic power. We also evaluate the system performance on deliverable power and channel capacity. Numerical results show that the proposed system can achieve watt-level battery charging power and above 20-bit/s/Hz communication capacity over 8-m distance, which satisfies the requirements of most indoor mobile devices.

A Cloud-Edge-Terminal Collaborative System for Temperature Measurement in COVID-19 Prevention

To prevent the spread of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19), preliminary temperature measurement and mask detection in public areas are conducted. However, the existing temperature measurement methods face the problems of safety and deployment. In this paper, to realize safe and accurate temperature measurement even when a person's face is partially obscured, we propose a cloud-edge-terminal collaborative system with a lightweight infrared temperature measurement model. A binocular camera with an RGB lens and a thermal lens is utilized to simultaneously capture image pairs. Then, a mobile detection model based on a multi-task cascaded convolutional network (MTCNN) is proposed to realize face alignment and mask detection on the RGB images. For accurate temperature measurement, we transform the facial landmarks on the RGB images to the thermal images by an affine transformation and select a more accurate temperature measurement area on the forehead. The collected information is uploaded to the cloud in real time for COVID-19 prevention. Experiments show that the detection model is only 6.1M and the average detection speed is 257ms. At a distance of 1m, the error of indoor temperature measurement is about 3%. That is, the proposed system can realize real-time temperature measurement in public areas.

Resonant Beam Communications with Echo Interference Elimination

Resonant beam communications (RBCom) is capable of providing wide bandwidth when using light as the carrier. Besides, the RBCom system possesses the characteristics of mobility, high signal-to-noise ratio (SNR), and multiplexing. Nevertheless, the channel of the RBCom system is distinct from other light communication technologies due to the echo interference issue. In this paper, we reveal the mechanism of the echo interference and propose the method to eliminate the interference. Moreover, we present an exemplary design based on frequency shifting and optical filtering, along with its mathematic model and performance analysis. The numerical evaluation shows that the channel capacity is greater than 15 bit/s/Hz.

Mobile Optical Communications Using Second Harmonic of Intra-Cavity Laser

Optical wireless communication (OWC) meets the demands of the future six-generation mobile network (6G) as it operates at several hundreds of Terahertz and has the potential to enable data rate in the order of Tbps. However, most beam-steering OWC technologies require high-accuracy positioning and high-speed control. Resonant beam communication (RBCom), as one kind of non-positioning OWC technologies, has been proposed for high-rate mobile communications. The mobility of RBCom relies on its self-alignment characteristic where no positioning is required. In a previous study, an external-cavity second-harmonic-generation (SHG) RBCom system has been proposed for eliminating the echo interference inside the resonator. However, its energy conversion efficiency and complexity are of concern. In this paper, we propose an intra-cavity SHG RBCom system to simplify the system design and improve the energy conversion efficiency. We elaborate the system structure and establish an analytical model. Numerical results show that the energy consumption of the proposed intra-cavity design is reduced to reach the same level of channel capacity at the receiver compared with the external-cavity one.

Mobile Wireless Power Transfer Using A Self-Aligned Resonant Beam

Wireless charging for a moving electronic device such as smartphone is extremely difficult. Owing to energy dissipation during wireless transmission, sophisticated tracking control is typically required for simultaneously efficient and remote energy transfer in mobile scenarios. However, reaching the necessary tracking accuracy and reliability is very hard or even impossible. Here, inspired by the structures of optical resonator and retroreflector, we develop a self-aligned light beam system for mobile energy transfer with simultaneous high efficiency and long distance by exploring radiative resonances inside a double-retroreflector cavity. This system eliminates the requirement for any tracking control. To reduce transmission loss in mobile scenarios, we combine the advantages of energy-concentration using an optical resonant beam and self-alignment using a double-retroreflector cavity. We demonstrate above 5-watt optical power transfer with nearly 100% efficiency to a few-centimeter-size receiver for charging a smartphone, which is moving arbitrarily in the range of 2-meter distance and 6-degree field of view from the transmitter. This charging system empowers a smartphone in mobile operation with unlimited battery life, where cable charging is no longer needed. We validate the simultaneous high efficiency and long distance of the mobile energy transfer system through theoretical analyses and systematic experiments.

GRN: Generative Rerank Network for Context-wise Recommendation

Reranking is attracting incremental attention in the recommender systems, which rearranges the input ranking list into the final rank-ing list to better meet user demands. Most existing methods greedily rerank candidates through the rating scores from point-wise or list-wise models. Despite effectiveness, neglecting the mutual influence between each item and its contexts in the final ranking list often makes the greedy strategy based reranking methods sub-optimal. In this work, we propose a new context-wise reranking framework named Generative Rerank Network (GRN). Specifically, we first design the evaluator, which applies Bi-LSTM and self-attention mechanism to model the contextual information in the labeled final ranking list and predict the interaction probability of each item more precisely. Afterwards, we elaborate on the generator, equipped with GRU, attention mechanism and pointer network to select the item from the input ranking list step by step. Finally, we apply cross-entropy loss to train the evaluator and, subsequently, policy gradient to optimize the generator under the guidance of the evaluator. Empirical results show that GRN consistently and significantly outperforms state-of-the-art point-wise and list-wise methods. Moreover, GRN has achieved a performance improvement of 5.2% on PV and 6.1% on IPV metric after the successful deployment in one popular recommendation scenario of Taobao application.

Revisit Recommender System in the Permutation Prospective

Recommender systems (RS) work effective at alleviating information overload and matching user interests in various web-scale applications. Most RS retrieve the user's favorite candidates and then rank them by the rating scores in the greedy manner. In the permutation prospective, however, current RS come to reveal the following two limitations: 1) They neglect addressing the permutation-variant influence within the recommended results; 2) Permutation consideration extends the latent solution space exponentially, and current RS lack the ability to evaluate the permutations. Both drive RS away from the permutation-optimal recommended results and better user experience. To approximate the permutation-optimal recommended results effectively and efficiently, we propose a novel permutation-wise framework PRS in the re-ranking stage of RS, which consists of Permutation-Matching (PMatch) and Permutation-Ranking (PRank) stages successively. Specifically, the PMatch stage is designed to obtain the candidate list set, where we propose the FPSA algorithm to generate multiple candidate lists via the permutation-wise and goal-oriented beam search algorithm. Afterwards, for the candidate list set, the PRank stage provides a unified permutation-wise ranking criterion named LR metric, which is calculated by the rating scores of elaborately designed permutation-wise model DPWN. Finally, the list with the highest LR score is recommended to the user. Empirical results show that PRS consistently and significantly outperforms state-of-the-art methods. Moreover, PRS has achieved a performance improvement of 11.0% on PV metric and 8.7% on IPV metric after the successful deployment in one popular recommendation scenario of Taobao application.