[EN] Future intelligent transportation systems will require complex networking infrastructures with communication among a huge number of vehicles and roadside nodes to support services such as autonomous driving. However, the deployment and operation of such a large number of roadside nodes is expensive due to either the cost of battery replacement or the maintenance of a continuous energy supply in long highways or rural areas. In this work, we evaluate the feasibility of a roadside unit harvesting energy from radio frequency (RF) signals transmitted by a nearby moving vehicle, with the incentive of using a part of the harvested energy to transmit small amounts of data to the vehicle. We consider a realistic model with the timing elements related to the movement of the vehicle, beam tracking errors, a non-linear model for energy harvesting, and potential line-of-sight obstructions in multi-vehicle scenarios. Results show that, with typical off-the-shelf components, it is feasible to use the RF harvested energy to transmit between a few hundred and several thousand bytes, depending on the speed of vehicles and the frequency of operation for energy harvesting, among other parameters.

This work was supported in part by the MCIN/AEI/10.13039/501100011033 and the European Union "NextGenerationEU"/PRTR underProject TED2021-131387B-I00; in part by the MCIN/AEI/10.13039/501100011033/FEDER, UE under Project PID2021-123168NB-I00; in part by the Villum Investigator Grant "WATER" from the Velux Foundation, Denmark; in part by the Finnish Foundation for Technology Promotion; and in part by the Research Council of Finland (former Academy of Finland) under Grant 348515 and Grant 346208 (6G Flagship Programme).