Optimal packet scheduling for delay minimization in an energy harvesting system

We consider an energy harvesting communication system, where both energy and data packets arrive at the transmitter during the course of communication. We determine the optimum packet scheduling scheme that minimizes the average delay experienced by all packets. We show that, different from the existing literature, the optimum transmission power is not constant between the energy harvesting and data arrival events; the transmission power starts high, decreases linearly, and potentially reaches zero between energy harvests and data arrivals. Intuitively, untransmitted bits experience cumulative delay due to the bits to be transmitted ahead of them, and hence the reason for transmission power starting high and decreasing over time between energy harvests and data arrivals.