  In the sixth-generation (6G) networks, massive low-power devices are expected
to sense environment and deliver tremendous data. To enhance the radio resource
efficiency, the integrated sensing and communication (ISAC) technique exploits
the sensing and communication functionalities of signals, while the
simultaneous wireless information and power transfer (SWIPT) techniques
utilizes the same signals as the carriers for both information and power
delivery. The further combination of ISAC and SWIPT leads to the advanced
technology namely integrated sensing, communication, and power transfer
(ISCPT). In this paper, a multi-user multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO)
ISCPT system is considered, where a base station equipped with multiple
antennas transmits messages to multiple information receivers (IRs), transfers
power to multiple energy receivers (ERs), and senses a target simultaneously.
The sensing target can be regarded as a point or an extended surface. When the
locations of IRs and ERs are separated, the MIMO beamforming designs are
optimized to improve the sensing performance while meeting the communication
and power transfer requirements. The resultant non-convex optimization problems
are solved based on a series of techniques including Schur complement
transformation and rank reduction. Moreover, when the IRs and ERs are
co-located, the power splitting factors are jointly optimized together with the
beamformers to balance the performance of communication and power transfer. To
better understand the performance of ISCPT, the target positioning problem is
further investigated. Simulations are conducted to verify the effectiveness of
our proposed designs, which also reveal a performance tradeoff among sensing,
communication, and power transfer.
