Energy efficiency optimization with energy harvesting using harvest-use approach

Energy harvesting is emerging as a promising approach to improve the energy efficiency (EE) and to extend the life of wireless networks. This paper focuses on energy-efficient transmission power allocation techniques for a point-to-point communication channel, equipped with a fixed-power battery, as well as a harvest-use battery. Using the fact that the harvested energy does not consume from the fixed battery, EE is formulated as the ratio of Shannon limit (as a function of the sum of the power consumed from the fixed battery and the harvest-use battery) to the sum of the circuit power and power consumed from the fixed battery. For the considered energy harvest-use technique, a time switching approach is used that in each frame, the node harvests energy for a percentage of frame time and transmits data for the rest of the frame time. Using the fact that the formulated EE is a quasi-concave function in transmission power, we use fractional programming to obtain the optimal power level, P̅
_u
, and in-turn, the maximum achievable EE. Analytical derivations show that the maximum achievable EE monotonically increases with harvested power, whereas, P̅
_u
monotonically decreases with it. Simulation results show the effects of harvested energy, fixed-battery power limit, and time switching rate on the maximum achievable EE.