  The increasing demand for spectral and energy efficient communication
networks has spurred a great interest in energy harvesting (EH) cognitive radio
networks (CRNs). Such a revolutionary technology represents a paradigm shift in
the development of wireless networks, as it can simultaneously enable the
efficient use of the available spectrum and the exploitation of radio frequency
(RF) energy in order to reduce the reliance on traditional energy sources. This
is mainly triggered by the recent advancements in microelectronics that puts
forward RF energy harvesting as a plausible technique in the near future. On
the other hand, it is suggested that the operation of a network relying on
harvested energy needs to be redesigned to allow the network to reliably
function in the long term. To this end, the aim of this survey paper is to
provide a comprehensive overview of the recent development and the challenges
regarding the operation of CRNs powered by RF energy. In addition, the
potential open issues that might be considered for the future research are also
discussed in this paper.
