text: This paper studies online transmission policies for an energy harvesting transmitter. Unlike the existing online policies which more or less require the knowledge on the future behavior of the energy and data arrival processes, we consider a practical but significantly more challenging scenario where the energy and data arrival processes are assumed to be totally unknown. Our design is formulated as a robust-optimal control problem which aims to optimize the worst-case performance. The transmission policy is designed only based on the current battery energy level and the data queue length directly monitored by the transmitter itself. Specifically, we apply an event-trigger approach in which the transmitter continuously monitors the battery energy and data queue length, and triggers an event when a significant change occurs in either of them. Once an event is triggered, the transmission policy is updated by the solution to the robust-optimal control problem. We consider both the transmission time and throughput as the performance metrics and formulated two optimization problems. The solutions are given in either a simple analytical form or an easy-to-implement algorithm.
  @cite_18: This paper considers a two-user Gaussian interference channel with energy harvesting transmitters. Different than conventional battery powered wireless nodes, energy harvesting transmitters have to adapt transmission to availability of energy at a particular instant. In this setting, the optimal power allocation problem to maximize the sum throughput with a given deadline is formulated. The convergence of the proposed iterative coordinate descent method for the problem is proved and the short-term throughput maximizing offline power allocation policy is found. Examples for interference regions with known sum capacities are given with directional waterfilling interpretations. Next, stochastic data arrivals are addressed. Finally, online and or distributed near-optimal policies are proposed. Performance of the proposed algorithms are demonstrated through simulations.
  @cite_4: We consider the optimal packet scheduling problem in a single-user energy harvesting wireless communication system. In this system, both the data packets and the harvested energy are modeled to arrive at the source node randomly. Our goal is to adaptively change the transmission rate according to the traffic load and available energy, such that the time by which all packets are delivered is minimized. Under a deterministic system setting, we assume that the energy harvesting times and harvested energy amounts are known before the transmission starts. For the data traffic arrivals, we consider two different scenarios. In the first scenario, we assume that all bits have arrived and are ready at the transmitter before the transmission starts. In the second scenario, we consider the case where packets arrive during the transmissions, with known arrival times and sizes. We develop optimal off-line scheduling policies which minimize the time by which all packets are delivered to the destination, under causality constraints on both data and energy arrivals.
  @cite_9: Transmission rate adaptation in wireless devices provides a unique opportunity to trade off data service rate with energy consumption. In this paper, we study optimal rate control to minimize transmission energy expenditure subject to strict deadline or other quality-of-service (QoS) constraints. Specifically, the system consists of a wireless transmitter with controllable transmission rate and with strict QoS constraints on data transmission. The goal is to obtain a rate-control policy that minimizes the total transmission energy expenditure while ensuring that the QoS constraints are met. Using a novel formulation based on cumulative curves methodology, we obtain the optimal transmission policy and show that it has a simple and appealing graphical visualization. Utilizing the optimal ldquoofflinerdquo results, we then develop an online transmission policy for an arbitrary stream of packet arrivals and deadline constraints, and show, via simulations, that it is significantly more energy-efficient than a simple head-of-line drain policy. Finally, we generalize the optimal policy results to the case of time-varying power-rate functions.
  @cite_3: From being a scientific curiosity only a few years ago, energy harvesting (EH) is well on its way to becoming a game-changing technology in the field of autonomous wireless networked systems. The promise of long-term, uninterrupted and self-sustainable operation in a diverse array of applications has captured the interest of academia and industry alike. Yet the road to the ultimate network of perpetual communicating devices is plagued with potholes: ambient energy is intermittent and scarce, energy storage capacity is limited, and devices are constrained in size and complexity. In dealing with these challenges, this article will cover recent developments in the design of intelligent energy management policies for EH wireless devices and discuss pressing research questions in this rapidly growing field.
  @cite_0: Wireless networks with energy harvesting battery equipped nodes are quickly emerging as a viable option for future wireless networks with extended lifetime. Equally important to their counterpart in the design of energy harvesting radios are the design principles that this new networking paradigm calls for. In particular, unlike wireless networks considered to date, the energy replenishment process and the storage constraints of the rechargeable batteries need to be taken into account in designing efficient transmission strategies. In this work, such transmission policies for rechargeable nodes are considered, and optimum solutions for two related problems are identified. Specifically, the transmission policy that maximizes the short term throughput, i.e., the amount of data transmitted in a finite time horizon is found. In addition, the relation of this optimization problem to another, namely, the minimization of the transmission completion time for a given amount of data is demonstrated, which leads to the solution of the latter as well. The optimum transmission policies are identified under the constraints on energy causality, i.e., energy replenishment process, as well as the energy storage, i.e., battery capacity. For battery replenishment, a model with discrete packets of energy arrivals is considered. The necessary conditions that the throughput-optimal allocation satisfies are derived, and then the algorithm that finds the optimal transmission policy with respect to the short-term throughput and the minimum transmission completion time is given. Numerical results are presented to confirm the analytical findings.
  @cite_23: 
  @cite_10: In this paper, we investigate the transmission completion time minimization problem in an additive white Gaussian noise (AWGN) broadcast channel, where the transmitter is able to harvest energy from the nature, using a rechargeable battery. The harvested energy is modeled to arrive at the transmitter during the course of transmissions. The transmitter has a fixed number of packets to be delivered to each receiver. The objective is to minimize the time by which all of the packets are delivered to their respective destinations. To this end, we optimize the transmit powers and transmission rates in a deterministic setting. We first analyze the structural properties of the optimal transmission policy in a two-user broadcast channel via the dual problem of maximizing the departure region by a fixed time T. We prove that the optimal total transmit power sequence has the same structure as the optimal single-user transmit power sequence in . In addition, the total power is split optimally based on a cut-off power level; if the total transmit power is lower than this cut-off level, all transmit power is allocated to the stronger user; otherwise, all transmit power above this level is allocated to the weaker user. We then extend our analysis to an M-user broadcast channel. We show that the optimal total power sequence has the same structure as the two-user case and optimally splitting the total power among M users involves M-1 cut-off power levels. Using this structure, we propose an algorithm that finds the globally optimal policy. Our algorithm is based on reducing the broadcast channel problem to a single-user problem as much as possible. Finally, we illustrate the optimal policy and compare its performance with several suboptimal policies under different settings.
summary: The development of energy harvesting devices has attracted significant attention in recent years with many potential applications in communication networks for green and self-sustainable communications @cite_3 . In order to make efficient use of harvested energy, both offline and online solutions have been investigated for designing the optimal transmission policy. Offline solutions are possible in highly predictable environments where the energy and data arrivals in a sufficiently distant future (for communication purpose) can be accurately estimated @cite_23 @cite_10 @cite_4 @cite_0 @cite_18 @cite_9 . On the other hand, online solutions typically reduce the dependence on the future knowledge of the energy and data arrival processes, and hence are more applicable in practice. The online algorithms can be roughly categorized into two frameworks as follows: