sensors

Communication
Distributed Transmit Power Control for Energy-Efficient
Wireless-Powered Secure Communications
Kisong Lee

Department of Information and Communication Engineering, Dongguk University, Seoul 04620, Korea;
[email protected]; Tel.: +82-2-2260-3233

Abstract: In this study, we consider energy-efficient wireless-powered secure communications, in

which N sets of transmitter, receiver, and energy harvesting (EH) nodes exist; each EH node is allowed
only to harvest energy from the transmitted signals but is not to permitted to decode information.
To maximize the sum secrecy energy efficiency (SEE) of the node sets while ensuring minimum EH
requirement for each EH node, we propose a distributed transmit power control algorithm using a
dual method, where each transmitter adjusts its transmit power iteratively until convergence without
sharing information with the other node sets. Through simulations under various environments,
we show that the proposed scheme surpasses conventional schemes in terms of the sum SEE and
has significantly reduced computation time compared with the optimal scheme, which suggests the
effectiveness and applicability of the proposed distributed method.

Keywords: secure communication; energy harvesting; secrecy energy efficiency; transmit power
control; distributed algorithm







Citation: Lee, K. Distributed

Transmit Power Control for 1. Introduction
Energy-Efficient Wireless-Powered With the rapid growth of mobile traffic and smart devices, next-generation wireless
Secure Communications. Sensors 2021, communications are expected to have increased demands for high data rates, wide cover-
21, 5861. https://doi.org/10.3390/
age, and high levels of security [1,2]. At the same time, the energy consumption would
s21175861
inevitably increase as the functions of mobile devices become more diverse. This may
cause inconvenience to users as the battery may need to be recharged or replaced more
Academic Editors: Carlo Trigona,
often to extend the lifetime of the network. Accordingly, several methods, such as energy-
Olfa Kanoun and Slim Naifar
efficient protocols [3], resource allocation [4,5], and multi-antenna techniques [6,7], have
been proposed to improve the energy efficiencies of networks.
Received: 27 July 2021
Accepted: 27 August 2021
In addition to energy-efficient use of resources, energy harvesting (EH) technology has
Published: 31 August 2021
emerged to solve the problem of energy shortages in wireless nodes [8–12]. In particular,
the methods to design EH systems were proposed in [8,9], and the potential of EH tech-
Publisher’s Note: MDPI stays neutral
nology as a promising means to enable self-sustainable operations of wireless nodes was
with regard to jurisdictional claims in
discussed in [10–12]. Recent investigations on energy efficiency optimization have been
published maps and institutional affil- also reported for wireless-powered networks, in which EH-enabled nodes exist [13–17].
iations. In [13], joint optimization of user scheduling and power allocation was studied to maximize
energy efficiency considering the characteristics of EH. The authors of [14] investigated
a proportional fair energy efficiency method that considers energy efficiency and user
fairness simultaneously. In [15,16], resource allocation strategies were proposed to improve
Copyright: © 2021 by the author.
the energy efficiency of wireless-powered cognitive radio networks (CRNs). Moreover,
Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland.
the authors of [17] proposed the max–min antenna selection scheme for EH-based two-way
This article is an open access article
relaying and analyzed the diversity gain.
distributed under the terms and Network diversification also causes increased concerns regarding security issues be-
conditions of the Creative Commons tween different networks because there is increased risk of eavesdropping by unlicensed
Attribution (CC BY) license (https:// users when secret keys are shared between legitimate users [1,2]. In this context, a number
creativecommons.org/licenses/by/ of studies have been conducted on physical layer security (PLS) to ensure secure communi-
4.0/). cations without relying on secret keys, such as cooperative relaying [18,19] and jamming

Sensors 2021, 21, 5861. https://doi.org/10.3390/s21175861 https://www.mdpi.com/journal/sensors

Sensors 2021, 21, 5861 2 of 12

signal transmission [20]. Regarding PLS and EH simultaneously, optimal policies for EH-
enabled relays [21,22] and an optimal resource allocation considering transmit power and
EH ratio [23] have been proposed for wireless-powered secure communications (WPSCs).
The optimal policy of a friendly jammer capable of EH has also been studied to help secure
communication between licensed nodes [24].
Unlike the aforementioned studies that focus only on energy efficiency [3–7,13–17] or
PLS [18–24], secrecy energy efficiency (SEE), which is defined as the ratio of the secrecy
rate to dissipated power, was suggested to achieve a balance between energy efficiency and
secure communication [25–30]. For example, resource allocations including transmit power
and beamforming vectors were optimized to maximize the SEE in CRNs [25,27] and multi-
antenna systems [26,28], respectively. Furthermore, the problem of SEE optimization was
investigated in multi-antenna and multi-user systems with confidentiality and reliability
constraints [29], and the optimal control parameters including first- and second-layer
power splitting ratios, beamforming vectors, and artificial noise covariance matrix were
derived to maximize the SEE in multi-antenna wireless-powered networks [30]. However,
only simple scenarios without co-channel interference were considered in [25,26], and high
computational complexity and information sharing among the nodes are needed to resolve
the problems noted in [27–30]. Therefore, a distributed algorithm with low complexity that
can be operated in real systems is required for energy-efficient WPSCs with co-channel
interference. The literature survey is summarized in Table 1.

Table 1. Literature Survey.

Literature Metric Research Issue Limitation

[3] EE Protocol Did not consider WPSCs.
[4,5] EE Resource allocation Did not consider WPSCs.
[6,7] EE Multi-antenna tech. Did not consider WPSCs.
[8,9] EH capability EH system design Did not consider WPSCs.
[10–12] Possibility of EH Applicability of EH to netw. Did not consider WPSCs.
[13] EE Resource allocation Did not consider PLS.
[14] Proportional fair EE Resource allocation Did not consider PLS.
[15,16] EE Resource allocation Did not consider PLS.
[17] EH power Antenna selection Did not consider PLS.
[18,19] Secure commun. Cooperative relaying Did not consider EH.
[20] Secure commun. Jamming signal trans. Did not consider EH.
[21,22] Secure commun. Optimal relaying policy Did not consider EH.
[23] Secure commun. Resource allocation Did not consider EH.
[24] Secure commun. Policy of a friendly jammer Did not consider EH.
[25,26] SEE Resource allocation Simple scenarios w/o interf.
[27–30] SEE Resource allocation Centralized approach.

In this study, we investigate a distributed transmit power control (TPC) for energy-
efficient WPCSs. The main contributions can be summarized as follows.
• We consider WPSCs where the EH nodes harvest energy from the transmitted signals
but are not allowed to decode private information shared between the transmitter and
receiver (Tx-Rx) pairs. Given this scenario, we formulate an optimization problem
to find the optimal transmit powers of the Txs to maximize the sum SEE while
guaranteeing that the amount of energy collected from each EH node is greater than a
minimum required value.
Sensors 2021, 21, 5861 3 of 12

• To solve this non-convex problem with low complexity, we propose a distributed

TPC algorithm using dual decomposition, where each Tx determines its transmit
power iteratively until convergence without sharing any information with the other
node sets.
• Through performance evaluations under various environments, we show that the pro-
posed scheme achieves a higher sum SEE than conventional schemes and remarkably
reduced computation time compared with the optimal scheme.
The remainder of this paper is organized as follows. In Section 2, we provide the
problem statement for the considered system model, and the distributed TPC algorithm for
energy-efficient WPSCs is proposed in Section 3. In Section 4, the performance evaluations
are shown through extensive simulations, and the conclusions are presented in Section 5.

2. System Model and Problem Statement

Figure 1 shows the schematic of the WPSCs, where N number of Tx-Rx pairs use the
same frequency band for data transmissions while N number of EH nodes are permitted
to only collect energy from the signals sent by the Txs; all nodes are equipped with single
antenna. Since the EH nodes are not allowed to interpret the information shared between
their corresponding Tx-Rx pairs, they are called untrusted nodes, and each Tx is required to
adjust its transmit power to maintain information confidentiality while supplying sufficient
energy to guarantee the minimum EH requirement for its EH node. The EH node associated
with each Tx-Rx pair is assumed to be predetermined, and the set of these nodes is denoted
as N, i.e., |N| = N. The channel gain between Tx i and Rx j is denoted as hi,j and that
between Tx i and EH node j is denoted as gi,j , which are assumed to follow a discrete time
block-fading model.

Set i
gi,i hi,i

EH node i Rx i
gi,j Tx i hj,i

gj,i hi,j Set j

gj,j hj,j
Tx j Rx j
EH node j
Figure 1. System model of WPSCs showing only two node sets for brevity.

Then, the signal received at Rx i is represented by

√ √
yi = pi hi,i xi + ∑ pk hk,i xk + zi , (1)
k ∈N\{i }

where xi denotes the

normalized data symbol transmitted by Tx i with transmit power pi ,
and zi ∼ CN 0, σ2 indicates the noise at Rx i.
From (1), the achievable spectral efficiency (SE) is obtained as
!
pi |hi,i |2
ri = log2 1 + 2 . (2)
σ + ∑k∈N\{i} pk |hk,i |2
Sensors 2021, 21, 5861 4 of 12

At the same time, the signal received at EH node i is expressed as

√ √
yie = pi gi,i xi + ∑ pk gk,i xk + zie , (3)
k ∈N\{i }

where zie ∼ CN 0, σ2 . Considering that each EH node can harvest energy not only from

the signal sent by Tx i but also from the signals sent by other Txs, the total harvested energy
at EH node i is given by

ei = ∑ ζ i p j | gj,i |2 , (4)
j ∈N

where ζ i is the energy conversion efficiency. On the other hand, if EH node i overhears the
signal sent by Tx i instead of harvesting energy, its achievable SE is represented by
!
e pi | gi,i |2
ri = log2 1 + 2 . (5)
σ + ∑k∈N\{i} pk | gk,i |2

From (2) and (5), the secrecy rate of node set i can be defined as the rate difference
between the legitimate and eavesdropping links [31] as follows:

ris = [ri − rie ]+ , (6)

where [·]+ = max(0, ·).

Moreover, the total power consumption at node set i can be obtained as

pCE
i = pC + p i − ei , (7)

where pC is the constant energy consumed by the circuits of each node set.
From (6) and (7), the SEE of node set i can be defined as the ratio of secrecy rate to
total power consumption (bits/Hz/Joule), which can be formulated as follows:

ris
ηis = . (8)
pCE
i

It should be noted that this metric indicates how efficiently energy can be used to
transmit secret information.
Based on these equations, we develop the optimization problem to find the optimal
transmit powers of the Txs to maximize the sum SEE while guaranteeing the minimum EH
requirement, Emin , for each EH node, as follows.

max
0~p
∑ ηis
i ∈N
s.t. ei ≥ Emin , i ∈ N
pi ≤ Pmax , i ∈ N, (9)

where ~p = { p1 , p2 , · · · , p N } and Pmax is the maximum transmit power allowed for each
Tx. The problem in (9) is non-convex because of the fractional objective function and
interference term; hence, the optimal solution of ~p cannot be derived in a closed-form.
The optimal solutions can be numerically found by brute-force search, where each pi is
quantized with M equally spaced values and all possible combinations are evaluated to
find the optimal value. However, the channel state information (CSI) of all wireless links
must be
available to implement this method, and a high computational complexity of
O M N is incurred, which increases exponentially with the number of node sets.
Sensors 2021, 21, 5861 5 of 12

3. Distributed Transmit Power Control Algorithm

In this section, we present the distributed TPC algorithm, which can be operated with
low complexity without sharing any information with the other node sets.
We decompose the original problem in (9) into N subproblems, which are then solved
independently with low computational complexity [32]. In the subproblem, each Tx finds
the transmit power to maximize its own SEE while ensuring the minimum EH requirement,
which is formulated as follows:

max ηis
0≤ p i

s.t. C1 : ei ≥ Emin
C2 : pi ≤ Pmax . (10)

ris
With defining xi = , the objective function in (10) is converted from a fractional
pCE
i
form to an equivalent subtractive form, ris − xi pCE
i , using nonlinear fractional program-
ming [33]. Accordingly, the subproblem in (10) is reformulated as

max ris − xi pCE

i
0≤ p i

s.t. C1 and C2. (11)

To derive the transmit power of each Tx using the dual method, we denote the
Lagrangian function of (11) as follows.

L( pi , λi , µi ) = ris − xi pCE
i + λi( ei − Emin )+ µi( Pmax − pi ), (12)

where λi ≥ 0 and µi ≥ 0 are the respective Lagrange multipliers of each constraint of (11).
The dual objective is then defined as

G(λi , µi ) = max L( pi , λi , µi ). (13)

~p0

Using (13), the dual problem can be formulated as

min G(λi , µi ). (14)

0≤ λ i , 0≤ µ i

To find the suboptimal value of pi , we build the Karush-Kuhn-Tucker (KKT) conditions

with the complementary slackness, as follows.

∂L( pi , λi , µi ) ∂ris ∂pCE ∂e

= − xi i + λi i − µi = 0, (15)
∂pi ∂pi ∂pi ∂pi
λi (ei − Emin ) = 0, (16)
µi ( Pmax − pi ) = 0, (17)
0 ≤ pi ≤ Pmax , 0 ≤ λi , 0 ≤ µi . (18)

Then, the transmit power that satisfies the KKT conditions in (15)–(18) can be derived
as follows.
" #+
1 Ψi
pi = − , (19)
ln 2( x (1 − ζ | g |2 ) + µ − λ ζ | g |2 )+ t
[s] |hi,i |2
i i i,i i i i i,i i
Sensors 2021, 21, 5861 6 of 12

[s]
where Ψi = σ2 + ∑ j∈N\{i} p j |h j,i |2 and ti is defined as

[s] | gi,i |2
ti = . (20)
σ2 + ∑l ∈N pl | gl,i |2

In (19), Rx i can easily calculate Ψi by subtracting the signal power received from
[s]
Tx i from the total received signal power. In addition, EH node i can measure ti readily
because the denominator of (20) is the total received signal power at EH node i. Therefore,
Tx i can determine its transmit power as shown in (19) by receiving information on Ψi from
[s]
Rx i and information on ti and gi,i from EH node i, respectively. It should be noted that
[s]
although the EH node is the untrusted node, it should send information on ti and gi,i to
Tx i to receive enough energy to meet the EH requirement for operation. Moreover, Tx i
does not need to share any information with the other node sets for calculating pi , thereby
allowing the proposed algorithm to operate in a distributed manner.
Moreover, the Lagrange multipliers are updated using a gradient algorithm as follows.
h i+
q +1 q
λi = λi − ν1 (ei − Emin ) ,
h i+
q +1 q
µi = µi − ν2 ( Pmax − pi ) , (21)

where ν1 and ν2 are sufficiently small step sizes for the update.
The operations of the proposed algorithm are described in Algorithm 1, where
~◦ = {◦1 , ◦2 , · · · , ◦ N }. Specifically, each Tx initializes the transmit power and Lagrange
multipliers randomly and calculates the SEE with the initialized transmit power. Next,
the Txs determine the transmit powers according to (19) and update the Lagrange mul-
tipliers according to (21) iteratively until the transmit powers converge. The Txs also
update the SEE and total consumed power with the converged transmit power to assess
the convergence of the SEE. This process is repeated until the SEE converges.

Algorithm 1 Distributed transmit power control algorithm

1: Initialize ~p, ~λ, and ~µ randomly
2: repeat
3: Set ~x = ~r s /~pCE
4: repeat
5: ~pold ← ~p
6: for i = 1 to N
7: Compute pi according to (19)
8: Update λi and µi according to (21)
9: end for
10: ~p = { p1 , p2 , · · · , p N }
11: until k~p − ~pold k < e
12: Update ~r s and ~pCE with ~p
13: until k~r s − ~x~pCE k < δ

Given that e−2 iterations are needed to ensure that the norm of the gradient is less than
e in the worst-case scenario [34], the number of iterations required for convergence of the
inner loop is e−2 . Moreover, T denotes the number of iterations required for convergence
of the outer

loop [35], and the computational complexity of the proposed algorithm is
O TN 2 e−2 , where N 2 is the number of computations required to calculate ~p.

4. Simulation Results and Discussion

For the performance evaluations, the following system parameters are used as default
unless stated otherwise: N = 3, Pmax = pC = 30 dBm, σ2 = −100 dBm, Emin = −10 dBm,
and ηi = 0.5 for i ∈ N. All nodes are distributed randomly over an area of 50 m × 50 m,
Sensors 2021, 21, 5861 7 of 12

in which the maximum distance of each signal link and EH link in the same node set is 15 m.
Because EH circuits have low power sensitivity, e.g., −10∼−30 dBm for energy harvesters
while −60∼−80 dBm for information receivers [12,36], the small size area is appropriate for
wireless-powered networks. A simplified path loss model with a path loss exponent of 2.7
is considered for urban areas [21]. Moreover, Rayleigh fading is considered for the signal
links to reflect the non-line-of-sight (nLoS) characteristics while Rician fading with a K-
factor of 6 is considered for the EH links to reflect the line-of-sight (LoS) characteristics [12].
The following five schemes are considered for performance evaluation in terms
 of the sum
SEE, which can be mathematically written as E ∏i∈N 1ei ≥Emin · ∑i∈N ηis . Note that a


penalty is assigned by setting the sum SEE to zero when the minimum EH constraint is
violated; therefore, the effects of EH violation are inherent in the sum SEE calculations.
• Optimal scheme: With the knowledge of the CSI of all wireless links, the near-optimal
performance can be found using a brute-force search with M = 100; however, the per-
formance for N ≥ 5 is found using a divide and conquer algorithm because of the
extremely high computational complexity of the brute-force search.
• Proposed scheme: The transmit powers of the Txs are determined using the proposed
algorithm given in Algorithm 1.
• r s max. scheme: The transmit powers of the Txs are determined to maximize the sum
secrecy rate, ∑i∈N ris , which is found from the divide and conquer algorithm.
• Equally reduced power (ERP) scheme [37]: All Txs use the same transmit power that
maximizes the sum SEE while meeting the minimum EH constraint, and the optimal
value of the transmit power is found by one-dimensional exhaustive search.
• EH max. scheme: The Txs use their maximum transmit powers to maximize the total
harvested energies of the EH nodes, ∑i∈N ei .
• Rand scheme: The transmit powers of the Txs are determined randomly.
Figure 2 depicts the transmit power of each Tx and the sum SEE against the number
of iterations, which shows the convergence of the proposed scheme. Each Tx adjusts the
transmit power to maximize its own SEE, which affects the SEEs of the other node sets.
Although the transmit power update at each Tx influences the other Txs, the transmit
powers of all Txs converge to stationary points with iteration progression; finally, the sum
SEE also converges to a value of 8.85 within 70 iterations.

300 10
Secrecy energy efficiency (bits/Hz/Joule)
Transmit power for each Tx (mW)

250 8

200 6

Tx 1
Tx 2
150 Tx 3 4
Ks

100 2

50 0
0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100
Number of iterations
Figure 2. Convergence of the proposed scheme.

Figure 3 depicts the sum SEE versus maximum transmit power (Pmax ). In the optimal,
proposed, and ERP schemes, the sum SEE increases with Pmax when Pmax < 27 dBm but
Sensors 2021, 21, 5861 8 of 12

converges to a stationary point when Pmax ≥ 27 dBm. This indicates that there is an optimal
transmit power at which the maximum SEE is achieved, i.e., the use of extra transmit power
beyond this value reduces the sum SEE. Therefore, these schemes do not use transmit
powers of more than 27 dBm even though Pmax increases over 27 dBm. On the other hand,
the r s max. and EH max. schemes use more transmit power to maximize the sum secrecy
rate and total harvested energy, respectively, as Pmax increases. However, the excessive use
of transmit power exceeding 27 dBm causes inefficient energy consumption rather than
improvement of the secrecy rate, so the sum SEE degrades seriously when Pmax is greater
than 27 dBm. The sum SEE of the rand scheme also decreases as Pmax increases because it
uses more transmit power without the adaptive TPC strategy.
Secrecy energy efficiency (bits/Hz/Joule)

10

Optimal
Proposed
2
rs max.
ERP
EH max.
0
Rand
18 21 24 27 30 33 36 39
Maximum transmit power, Pmax (dBm)
Figure 3. Sum secrecy energy efficiency vs. maximum transmit power (Pmax ) for different schemes.

Figures 4 and 5 depict the sum SEE versus required harvested energy (Emin ) and energy
conversion efficiency (η), respectively. In an environment where it is difficult to satisfy
the EH requirements, i.e., larger Emin and smaller η, the Txs should use the additional
transmit power inefficiently to satisfy the EH requirements. For some channel realizations,
e.g., deep fading, the EH requirements cannot be inherently guaranteed at extremely large
Emin or small η. Then, this causes serious degradation in the sum SEE because it is set to
zero when the minimum EH constraint is violated. Hence, the sum SEEs of all schemes
decrease as Emin increases or η decreases, especially when Emin ≥ −5 dBm and η ≤ 0.3.
However, we can see that the proposed scheme shows a trend similar to the optimal scheme
and outperforms the conventional schemes. In particular, the performance gain of the
proposed scheme compared to the conventional schemes is greater in an environment
that favorably satisfies the EH requirements, where the adaptive TPC strategy can operate
more effectively.
Sensors 2021, 21, 5861 9 of 12

Secrecy energy efficiency (bits/Hz/Joule)

12 Optimal
Proposed
rs max.
10
ERP
EH max.
8 Rand

0
-20.0 -17.5 -15.0 -12.5 -10.0 -7.5 -5.0 -2.5 0.0
Required harvested energy, Emin (dBm)

Figure 4. Sum secrecy energy efficiency vs. required harvested energy (Emin ) for different schemes.

Optimal
Secrecy energy efficiency (bits/Hz/Joule)

12
Proposed
rs max.
10 ERP
EH max.
Rand
8

0.1 0.2 0.3 0.4 0.5 0.6 0.7 0.8 0.9

Energy conversion efficiency, K

Figure 5. Sum secrecy energy efficiency vs. energy conversion efficiency (η) for different schemes.

Figure 6 depicts the cumulative distribution function (CDF) versus sum SEE. It is
observed that the CDF of the proposed scheme is closest to that of the optimal scheme, thus
confirming the effectiveness of the proposed TPC strategy. Given that high values of SEE
are more distributed in the CDFs of the optimal and proposed schemes, rather than those
of the conventional schemes, we note that the effective TPC is important for improving
the SEE.
Sensors 2021, 21, 5861 10 of 12

1.0

Cumulative distribution function

0.8

0.6

0.4
Optimal
Proposed
0.2 rs max.
ERP
EH max.
Rand
0.0
0 5 10 15 20 25 30
Secrecy energy efficiency (bits/Hz/Joule)

Figure 6. Cumulative distribution function vs. sum secrecy energy efficiency for different schemes.
∑ ηs
Figure 7 depicts the average SEE for each node set ( i∈NN i ) and the computation time
against number of node sets (N). It should be noted that the computation time of the
EH max. and random schemes are omitted in subfigure (b) because they do not perform
any computations to determine the transmit powers. As N increases, the Txs experience
severe interference with each other. As a result, the improvement in the secrecy rate is
insignificant compared to the transmit power used, which in turn deteriorates the average
SEE with increasing N. However, the proposed scheme achieves a higher SEE than the
conventional schemes by coping with the interference and reduces the computation time
significantly compared with the optimal and r s max. schemes. Although the ERP scheme
can achieve the lowest computation time for a large number of N because the optimal
transmit power can be found by one-dimensional search even as N increases, the proposed
scheme achieves higher sum SEE than the ERP scheme, which verifies the effectiveness of
the proposed distributed method in term of energy efficiency and secure communication.

108
4 Optimal Optimal
Proposed Proposed
Average secrecy energy efficiency

107
rs max. rs max.
ERP ERP
Computation time (msec)

106
3 EH max.
Rand
(bits/Hz/Joule)

105

2 104

103

1
102

101
0
100
2 3 4 5 6 7 8 2 3 4 5 6 7 8
Number of node sets, N Number of node sets, N

(a) (b)
Figure 7. Performance comparison against number of node sets (N) for different schemes. (a) Average secrecy energy
efficiency per each node set vs. N. (b) Computation time vs. N.
Sensors 2021, 21, 5861 11 of 12

Thus, the simulation results show that the proposed scheme has a slight difference
in performance from the optimal scheme of about 10% because of its distributed nature;
however, it is confirmed that the proposed scheme improves the sum SEE using the effec-
tive TPC strategy compared with the conventional schemes while significantly reducing
computation time.

5. Conclusions
This study involves investigation of a distributed TPC algorithm for energy-efficient
WPSCs, in which the transmit powers of the Txs are optimized to maximize their own
SEEs while guaranteeing the minimum EH requirements for the corresponding EH nodes.
Specifically, we analytically derived the closed-form equation for the transmit power,
and proposed an iterative algorithm using a dual method, that can be operated in a
distributed manner without sharing information with the other node sets. The simulation
results confirm that the proposed scheme can achieve a higher sum SEE than existing
schemes by adjusting the transmit power with respect to secrecy rate and energy efficiency;
moreover, the computation time is significantly reduced compared with the optimal scheme.
It is expected that our solution will be used to solve the complex TPC problems of WPSCs
in a simple distributed manner. Interesting topics for future work include a deep learning-
based distributed TPC algorithm for improving the performance of WPSCs.

Funding: This work was supported by the National Research Foundation of Korea (NRF) grant
funded by the Korea government (MSIT) (No. 2021R1A2C4002024).
Institutional Review Board Statement: Not applicable.
Informed Consent Statement: Not applicable.
Data Availability Statement: Not applicable.
Conflicts of Interest: The authors declare no conflict of interest.

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