Joint Time and Energy Allocation for QoS-Aware Throughput Maximization in MIMO-Based Wireless Powered Underground Sensor Networks

We study the optimal resource allocation in the MIMO-based wireless powered underground sensor network (WPUSN) for throughput maximization. Compared to existing WPUSNs that rely on single-antenna wireless power transfer techniques to transmit geological data in real time, the MIMO-based WPUSN can be adaptively replenished by beamforming. Note that, WPUSN has two remarkable features: the severe wireless path loss and diverse data traffic demands from different underground sensors. Further, by considering the quality of service (QoS) with respect to diverse data traffic demands and communication reliability, the throughput of the network is considered as a crucial measure, which suffers from a significant loss since it has to encounter a seriously unreasonable energy scarcity under the strong-heterogeneity underground environment. To this end, the MIMO is used to eliminate the unreasonable distribution of harvested energy resources and improve effective throughput for WPUSNs. In this paper, we formulate a non-convex optimization problem to maximize the system throughput in MIMO-based WPUSNs with QoS assurance. Specifically, we find there exists no mutual forbearance between the time allocation and the beamforming weight, and transform this non-convex problem to a solvable convex-constrained problem with convex sub-problems. Finally, we give a closed-form solution and show its advantages by simulations.