Weighted Tradeoff Between Spectral Efficiency and Energy Efficiency in Energy Harvesting Systems

This paper proposes a new power allocation scheme to jointly optimize energy efficiency (EE) and spectral efficiency (SE) of a point-to-point communication system in which the transmitter is equipped with fixed as well as energy harvesting batteries. Time switching protocol is used such that in each time frame the node either harvests energy or transmits information. Firstly, a multi-objective optimization problem which jointly optimizes EE and SE is formulated. An importance weight parameter is introduced to control the priority level between EE and SE. Secondly, the multi-objective problem is transformed into a single-objective optimization problem by using importance weight, and then solved through fractional programming. Using the Karush-Kuhn-Tucker conditions, the optimum power allocation scheme without input power constraint is developed. The ensuing solution is then generalized for system operation with average input power constraint. Closed-form expressions are derived and tested through simulations. Numerical results results are provided, and show the impact of the harvested power in improving the overall rate of the system. Also investigation is done to analyze the effect of system parameters on the achievable trade-off performance of the energy-harvesting based system.