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fully edited. Content may change prior to final publication. Citation information: DOI 10.1109/LCOMM.2018.2871442, IEEE
Communications Letters
Deep Learning Based Channel Estimation for Wireless Energy Transfer
Jae-Mo Kang, Chang-Jae Chun, and Il-Min Kim, Senior Member, IEEE
Abstract—We propose a deep learning based channel esti-
mation technique for wireless energy transfer. Specifically, we
develop a channel learning scheme using the deep autoencoder,
which learns the channel state information (CSI) at the energy
transmitter based on the harvested energy feedback from the
energy receiver, in the sense of minimizing the mean square
error (MSE) of the channel estimation. Numerical results demon-
strate that the proposed scheme learns the CSI very well and
significantly outperforms the conventional scheme in terms of
the channel estimation MSE as well as the harvested energy.
Index Terms—Autoencoder, channel estimation, deep learning,
wireless energy transfer.
I. I NTRODUCTION
Wireless energy transfer (WET) through the radio frequency
(RF) wave has attracted significant interest in the literature
[1]–[7]. The critical limitations for the WET are the short
operating distance and the low energy transfer efficiency due to
the propagation attenuation. To overcome these limitations, the
multi-antenna technique such as the energy beamforming can
be used [1], [2]. However, the performance of this technique
heavily depends on the knowledge of channel state informa-
tion (CSI) at the energy transmitter (ET) [3]–[7]. Therefore,
acquiring the CSI at the ET is a practically very important
problem for WET systems.
The practical RF power (or energy) harvesting circuitry is
composed of only rectifiers, and thus, it has strictly limited
(essentially, no) capability of the RF-to-baseband conversion
and the baseband processing [3]–[7]. Therefore, the traditional
CSI acquisition approach at the transmitter, which requires
the channel estimation at the receiver with complicated RF-to-
baseband conversion and baseband processing prior to the CSI
feedback, is almost impossible to realize at the practical energy
receiver (ER) [3]–[7]. To overcome this critical challenge, for
the WET system, several techniques were developed in the
recent literature to acquire the CSI at the ET [3]–[7]. In [3],
[4], assuming the channel reciprocity, the CSI was estimated
at the ET using the uplink pilots sent from the ER. Clearly,
the techniques developed in [3], [4] are applicable only to
the time-division duplex (TDD) scenario where the downlink
and uplink channels are reciprocal. However, for the general
scenario such as in the frequency-division duplex (FDD) case,
it is generally not possible to use the techniques of [3], [4],
because the downlink and uplink channels are different [5]–
[7]. To address this issue, in [5]–[7], the CSI was estimated at
the ET based on the harvested energy feedback information
from the ER. This approach does not require the channel
reciprocity, and thus, is effective and applicable even when the
downlink and uplink channels are completely independent. In
This work has been supported by Natural Sciences and Engineering
Research Council (NSERC).
J.-M. Kang, C.-J. Chun, and I.-M. Kim are with the Department of
Electrical and Computer Engineering, Queen’s University, Kingston, ON K7L
3N6, Canada (e-mail: jaemo.kang@queensu.ca; changjae.chun@queensu.ca;
ilmin.kim@queensu.ca).
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1
[5]–[7], however, the actual channel coefficients themselves
were not estimated at the ET; instead, some other values
were estimated. Specifically, in [5], [6], the Gram (or one-
point sample correlation) matrix of the channel coefficients
was estimated and, in [7], the phase differences between the
channel coefficients were estimated.
To the best of our knowledge, the problem of estimating
the (downlink) channel coefficients using the harvested energy
feedback information has not been studied in the literature.
Estimation-theoretically, this problem can be considered as
the phase retrieval problem [8], [9]. The well-known and
popular technique to tackle this problem is the Gerchberg-
Saxton algorithm developed in [9], which has recently drawn
renewed interest in the areas of machine learning, signal
processing, and communications [8]. Unlike the techniques
of [5]–[7], this technique can be directly used for the WET
system to estimate the channel coefficients at the ET based
on the harvested energy feedback information from the ER.
However, the performance of the Gerchberg-Saxton algorithm
is not satisfactory due to the global phase ambiguity issue.
Furthermore, a number of iterations are required to compute
the channel estimate.
To the best of our knowledge, all the critical issues above
have not been addressed in the literature. This motivated
our work. In this paper, we study the channel estimation
problem for the WET system, which is very difficult to solve
analytically or even numerically due to both nonlinearity and
nonconvexity. To intelligently and effectively address the diffi-
culty, we exploit the deep learning technique, which is inspired
by the fact that the deep neural network is a universal function
approximator and has succeeded in solving many nonlinear
and nonconvex problems in various areas [10]. To the best of
our knowledge, our work is the first to utilize the deep learning
for the channel estimation in the WET system. We develop a
channel learning scheme using the deep autoencoder, in which
the channel coefficients are autonomously learned at the ET
based on the harvested energy feedback from the ER and
the pilot signals are adaptively optimized, such that the mean
square error (MSE) of the channel estimation is minimized. In
sharp contrast to the Gerchberg-Saxton method, the proposed
scheme learns the channel parameters very well by resolving
the phase ambiguity issue. Also, after the offline training,
our proposed scheme can compute the channel estimate very
efficiently without any iteration.
Notation: We use E[·], (·)T , | · |, k · k, ∠(·), and ∇ to
denote the expectation, the transpose, the absolute value or
cardinality, the Euclidean norm, the phase, and the gradient
operator, respectively.
II. S YSTEM M ODEL AND P ROBLEM F ORMULATION
A. System Model
We consider a WET system composed of an ET and an
ER. The ET is equipped with M antennas and the ER is
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Communications Letters
equipped with a single antenna. Let h = [h1 , · · · , hM ]T =
[r1 ejφ1 , · · · , rM ejφM ]T denote the M ×1 channel vector from
the ET to the ER, where hm denotes the channel coefficient
from the mth antenna of the ET to the ER. Also, rm = |hm |
and φm = ∠(hm ) denote the magnitude and the phase of
hm , respectively. The channel is constant within each coherent
block. In each block, there are two phases: the channel
estimation phase, followed by the WET phase.
1) Channel Estimation Phase: In this phase, the ET sends
the pilot signals to the ER over N time slots. Let x(n) =
[x1 (n), · · · , xM (n)]T denote the M × 1 pilot signal vector of
the ET at the nth time slot, n ∈ {1, 2, · · · , N }, where xm (n)
is the pilot symbol of the mth antenna at the ET. The power
2
constraint of the pilot signal is given by kx(n)k ≤ P , ∀n,
where P denotes the maximum transmit power at the ET. At
the nth time slot, the amount of energy (or interchangeably,
the power assuming the unit time) harvested
2
nonconvexity. Also, it is generally not possible to use the linear
estimation technique because the observations {y(n)} of (1)
are all nonlinear functions of the variable h to be estimated,
and thus, the channel estimation is a nonlinear estimation
problem. One might try to use the Bayes estimation techniques
for the channel estimation. However, these techniques require
very high complexity to compute the channel estimate. Also,
the analysis becomes very difficult due to the the non-closed
form of the channel estimate. In order to overcome these
challenges/shortcomings intelligently and effectively, and to
carry out the challenging optimization of (P1) very efficiently,
we exploit the deep learning technique in the next section.
III. D EEP L EARNING BASED C HANNEL E STIMATION
A. Conventional Scheme: Gerchberg-Saxton Algorithm
From the estimation-theoretic perspective, estimating the
 T by2the power channel vector h from the harvested energy feedback
harvesting circuit at the ER is given by ζ x (n)h , which is
measured by the energy (or power) meter, where 0 < ζ ≤ 1 is
the energy (or power) conversion efficiency. The ER then feeds
back to the ET the amount of harvested energy through the
feedback channel at the cost of consuming additional energy
and certain amounts of time and bandwidth. We assume the
error-free feedback link as in [5]–[7]. Thus, the harvested
energy feedback signal received by the ET is given by
information {y(n)} can be considered as the phase
retrieval problem [8], [9]. The most well-known and
popular approach to tackle this problem is the Gerchberg-
Saxton algorithm [9], which has recently drawn renewed
interest in the literature, because this scheme can be
considered as a machine learning (or data clustering)
technique [8]. In the Gerchberg-Saxton algorithm, the
2 estimate of h is computed
−1 P iteratively as follows: ĥ(i+1) =
y(n) = ζ xT (n)h + z(n), n = 1, · · · , N,
 
j∠(x (n)ĥ(i) )
T
(1) PN T N
n=1 x(n)x (n) n=1 x(n)|y(n)|e ,
where z(n) denotes the noise term, which accounts for the where ĥ(i) is the estimate of h at the ith iteration. However,
impairments in the measurement and quantization processes in the Gerchberg-Saxton algorithm, a considerable number
such as the antenna noise, the rectifier noise, the measurement of iterations are required, which might be difficult to carry
error, and the feedback quantization error. In this paper, the out in the stringent real-time applications. Furthermore, there
goal of the channel estimation is to estimate the channel always exists the global phase ambiguity (i.e., ĥ(i) ejψ for
vector h at the ET based on the harvested energy feedback any ψ yields the same observations {y(n)} as those of ĥ(i) ),
information from the ER (i.e., {y(n)}). which severely degrades the channel estimation performance.
2) WET Phase: In this phase, the ET sends the energy
signal s to the ER. If the channel vector h were perfectly B. Proposed Channel Estimation with Deep Autoencoder
known, the ET could deliver the maximum amount of energy
The structure of the proposed learning scheme is presented
to the ER √
via the optimal energy beamforming technique [1]–
in Fig. 1, which is based on the deep autoencoder. The similar
[6]: s∗ = khk
Ph
µ, where µ is the energy-carrying symbol with
structure was studied in the literature, e.g., in [11]. It consists
unit power. However, this approach is not possible in our case,
of two parts: the encoder in Fig. 1(b) and the decoder in Fig.
because the knowledge of the channel vector h is imperfect
1(c). The motivation of adopting the autoencoder is to use the
due to the channel estimation. Therefore, in this paper, the
encoder and the decoder for the two different purposes: the
energy signal is determined based√ on the channel estimate
P ĥ pilot design and the channel learning, respectively.
(denoted by ĥ) as follows: s = kĥk µ. The harvested energy
1) Encoder: For the optimization of (P1) (i.e., joint channel
T
h|2
 T 2
at the ER is thus given by Q = ζ s h = ζPk|ĥ ĥk 2
. learning and pilot design), how to construct the encoder is
very important; but, is generally challenging, because the
B. Problem Formulation neural network must be constructed such that the pilots are
optimizable. One might try to take the naive autoencoder
In this paper, we
aim to find the channel estimator ĥ =
F {y(n)}; {x(n)} at the ET, and at the same time, we aim approach to construct the encoder such as in [11]. Specifically,
to design the pilot signals {x(n)} in the sense of minimizing the encoder might be constructed using a neural network with
the MSE of the channel estimation as follows: arbitrary weights and arbitrary activation functions to learn an
h

2 i arbitrary feature of the channel h. However, it turns out that
(P1) : min E
h − ĥ
s.t. ĥ = F (y; X) (2) such naive approach is never effective for channel learning, nor
F (·),X
pilot design. To address this issue, in our paper, we construct
T T
where X = [x(1), · · · , x(N )] and y = [y(1), · · · , y(N )] . the encoder using a two-layer (i.e., shallow) neural network
Note that it is generally very difficult to solve the problem (P1) with the specific weights and activation function function
analytically or even numerically due to the nonlinearity and to learn the specific feature. The structure of the proposed

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(a) Structure of the proposed deep autoencoder
Fig. 1. Structure of the proposed channel learning scheme
encoder is presented in Fig. 1(b). Our approach is motivated by
the fact that the physical mechanism for the pilot transmission
and harvested energy feedback in (1) can be exactly modeled
by the neural network in Fig. 1(b).
To model the mechanism of (1), the proposed encoder
takes the channel h as the input and the harvested energy
feedback information {y(n)} (rather than arbitrary feature)
as the output. To learn {y(n)} given h, we take effective
and innovative approaches: we propose to use the pilots
{xm (n)} as the weights of the encoder (rather than arbitrary
weights), and we propose to use a new activation function,
namely, the scaled magnitude square function φ(v) = ζ|v|2 ,
at the output nodes of the encoder (rather than arbitrary
activation function). The proposed encoder consists the two
layers: the input layer with M nodes (i.e., neurons) and
the output layer with N nodes. The operation of the nth
output node is as follows. First, the weighted sum of the M
inputs is computed. Then the result is fed into the activation
function φ(·). Finally, the noise z(n) is added. Overall, the
operation of
the encoder can be mathematically written
Communications Letters
3
(b) Structure of the encoder (c) Structure of the decoder
(ReLU) as the activation function at the hidden nodes, i.e.,
ϕ` (v) = max{v, 0}, ` = 1, · · · , L, due to its benefits of
avoiding the gradient vanishing problem, faster learning, and
computational efficiency [10].
In the proposed learning scheme, the operation Genc (·) of
the encoder is first performed, and then, the operation Gdec (·)
of the decoder is performed. Thus, the operation

can be
mathematically written as ĥ = Gdec Genc h; X ; θ , where
X is the matrix of the pilot symbols {xm (n)} (i.e., the weights
of the encoder) and θ is the set of the parameters (i.e., the
weights and biases) of the decoder.
3) Training Procedure: The proposed channel learning
scheme has to be trained to carry out the optimization of (P1)
(i.e., to minimize the MSE). To achieve this goal, it is very
important how the loss function is selected, because the loss
function critically affects the performance to be optimized. To
address this issue, we use the cost function of (P1) (i.e., the
MSE) to select the loss function. Considering the operation
of the proposed learning scheme and using the sample mean
approach, the cost function of (P1) can be computed as
 P M 2 N as 1 X

y = φ Xh + z = ζ  m=1 xm (n)hm  + zm (n) n=1 ,
h − Gdec Genc h; X ; θ
2 (3)
where z = [z(1), · · · , z(N )]T .
2) Decoder: We construct the decoder using a deep neural
network to represent (or approximate) the channel estimator
F(·). The structure of the proposed decoder is presented in
Fig. 1(c). For the channel learning given the harvested energy
feedback information, the proposed decoder takes the values of
{y(n)} predicted by the encoder as the input and the channel
estimate ĥ (both the magnitudes and phases of {ĥm }) as
the output. Also, there are an input layer with N nodes, an
output layer with M nodes, and L hidden layers, where the `th
hidden layer has K` nodes. The operation of each of hidden
and output nodes is as follows. First, the weighted sum of
the inputs is computed and a bias is added. Then the result
is fed into an activation function. Overall, the operation of
the proposed decoder can be mathematically

written
as ĥ =

ϕo Wo ϕL WL ϕL−1 · · · ϕ1 W1 y + b1 · · · + bL + bo ,
where W` and b` (or Wo and bo ) are the matrix of the
weights and the vector of the biases in the `th hidden layer (or
the output layer), respectively. Also, ϕ` (·) and ϕo (·) denote
the activations functions at the nodes of the `th hidden layer
and the output layer, respectively. It is generally possible
to use any activation function at each of the hidden and
output nodes. In our proposed scheme, the linear (or identity)
function is used as the activation function at the output
nodes, i.e., ϕo (v) = v. Also, we use the rectified linear unit
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L h, ĥ; X, θ =
|T |
h∈T
where T denotes the set of training samples. Therefore, we
select the loss function as in (3).
To minimize the loss function L(·) of (3), in this paper, we
optimize the parameters X and θ according to the gradient
descent method. Since there is no constraint for the weights
and biases of the decoder, those parameters can be updated by
performing the gradient descent step as follows:


θ ← θ − α∇θ L h, ĥ; X, θ (4)
where α > 0 is the learning rate that determines the step size
of the update. However, the naive gradient descent method of
(4) cannot be directly used to update the parameters of the
encoder (i.e., the pilots), because there are the transmit power
constraints imposed on the pilot signals, i.e., kx(n)k2 ≤ P ,
∀n. To address this issue and to satisfy the power constraints,
we propose to update the values of {x(n)} using the projected
gradient descent method1,2 as follows:
h
i
x(n) ← ΠX x(n) − α∇x(n) L h, ĥ; X, θ , ∀n, (5)
1 Note that the naive gradient descent method solves unconstrained min-
imization problems, whereas the projected gradient descent method solves
constrained minimization problems.
2 In the literature for the image recognition, e.g., in [12], the projected
gradient descent method was used for the certain purposes. To the best of our
knowledge, however, the projected gradient descent method has never been
utilized in the literature of deep learning for communications including [11].
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Communications Letters
4


where X = v : kvk2 ≤ P denotes the power constraint

Average harvested energy [J]

7

set and ΠX [v] = arg minu∈X ku − vk2 is the projection of v

101 6
onto the set X . In the following, we derive the expression of
the projection operator ΠX [·] in closed form. 5

MSE
Lemma 1: The projection of v onto the √ set X is given by
2 Pv 100 Proposed, (P1) 4
ΠX [v] = v if kvk ≤ P and ΠX [v] = kvk if kvk2 > P . Conventional [9]
2
Proof: When kvk ≤ P , since v = arg minu∈X ku − 3
Proposed, (P1)
vk2 , we have ΠX [v] = v. When kvk2 > P , us- Conventional [9]
2
0 20 40 60 80 100 0 20 40 60 80 100
ing the Lagrange duality method, we have v/(1 + λ) = Number of gradient steps Number of gradient steps
arg minu∈X ku − vk2 , where λ is the Lagrange multiplier. Fig. 2. Learning performance of the proposed scheme and the conventional
2
From kv/(1 + λ)k √ = P , we have λ = kvk/P − 1, which scheme.
101
yields ΠX [v] = P v/kvk.

Average harvested energy [J]

7.0
Note that the training procedure above can be carried out
Proposed, (P1) 6.5
offline as follows: (i) generate samples of the channel h and Conventional [9]
noises {z(n)} according to the channel and noise statistics, 6.0
Proposed, (P1)

MSE
100
respectively; (ii) optimize the parameters θ and the pilots 5.5 Conventional [9]
{xm (n)} according to (4) and (5), respectively. During the 5.0

training procedure, therefore, the proposed encoder learns how 4.5

the pilots {xm (n)} must be designed and how the harvested
energy feedback information {y(n)} must be predicted based
on the channel and noise samples. Also, the proposed decoder
learns how the channel h must be estimated from the the
values of {y(n)} learned by the encoder.
After the training, the optimized weights {xm (n)} of the
proposed encoder Genc (·) can be used as the pilots in practice.
Interestingly enough, it turns out that the pilots designed by
our proposed scheme are generally nonorthogonal, which is
in sharp contrast to the existing result such as in [6]. Once the
harvested energy is fed back from the ER, the ET can compute
the channel estimate ĥ very efficiently using the proposed
decoder Gdec (·) without any iteration or any numerical com-
putation, which is in sharp contrast to the Gerchberg-Saxton
algorithm and the Bayes estimation techniques.
IV. N UMERICAL R ESULTS
In the simulations, we consider a WET system with M = 4,
N = 8, and P = 2 W. Also, we consider the Rician fading
model. The line-of-sight channel components are generated
from the Nakagami-m distribution with the shape parameter
of m = 0.5 and the spread parameter of Ω = 1. Also,
the scattering channel components and the noises {z(n)} are
generated independently according to the Gaussian distribution
with zero mean and unit variance. The signal-to-noise ratio
(SNR) is σP2 . In the proposed scheme, we set L = 5, K` = 50,
∀`, and α = 0.01. We train our proposed scheme using 2×105
training samples.
Fig. 2 compares the performance of the proposed scheme
and the conventional scheme. It can be observed that the
channel estimation MSE of the proposed scheme (i.e., the cost
function of (P1)) decreases as the number of gradient steps
increases, meaning that the learning performance improves.
After about 4 (or 6) iterations, the proposed scheme starts to
yields lower MSE (or larger amount of harvested energy) than
the conventional scheme.
In Fig. 3, the channel estimation MSE and the average
harvested energy are shown versus the SNR. One can see that
the proposed scheme considerably outperforms the conven-
tional scheme. This result shows that, unlike the conventional
10−1 4.0
0.0 2.5 5.0 7.5 10.0 12.5 15.0 17.5 20.0 0.0 2.5 5.0 7.5 10.0 12.5 15.0 17.5 20.0
SNR [dB] SNR [dB]
Fig. 3. Channel estimation MSE and average harvested energy versus the
SNR.
scheme, the proposed scheme learns the channel coefficients
very well by resolving the phase ambiguity issue.
V. C ONCLUSION
We proposed the deep autoencoder based channel learning
scheme for the WET system to minimize the MSE of the
channel estimation. The numerical results demonstrated the su-
perior performance and effectiveness of the proposed scheme.
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