Transmission capacity of wireless ad hoc networks with energy harvesting nodes

Transmission capacity of an ad hoc wireless network is analyzed when each node of the network harvests energy from nature, e.g. solar, wind, vibration etc. Energy arrival at each node is assumed to be i.i.d. fixed rate arrival process, and each node stores energy using a battery. With infinite battery capacity, for ALOHA medium access protocol (MAP), optimal transmission probability that maximizes the transmission capacity is derived. For CSMA MAP, back-off probability and outage probability are derived in terms of input energy distribution, thereby characterizing the transmission capacity. Analysis for the realistic case of finite battery capacity is also presented for a special case of Bernoulli distributed energy arrivals. Game theoretic analysis is also presented for ALOHA MAP, where each transmitter tries to maximize its own throughput, by deriving the Nash equilibrium.