Wireless Powered Mobile Edge Computing Networks: A Survey

Wireless Powered Mobile Edge Computing (WPMEC) is an integration of Mobile Edge Computing (MEC) and Wireless Power Transfer (WPT) technologies, to both improve computing capabilities of mobile devices and energy compensation for their limited battery capabilities. Generally, energy transmitters, mobile devices, and edge servers form a WPMEC system that realizes a closed loop of sending and collecting energy as well as offloading and receiving task data. Due to constraints of time-varying network environments, time-coupled battery levels, and the half-duplex character of mobile devices, the joint design of computation offloading and resource allocation solutions in WPMEC systems has become extremely challenging, and a great number of studies have been devoted to it in recent years. In this article, we first introduce the basic model of the WPMEC system. Then, we present key issues and techniques related to WPMEC. In addition, we summarize solutions for computation offloading and resource allocation to solve critical issues in WPMEC networks. Finally, we discuss some research challenges and open issues.