Throughput Maximization in Wireless Powered Energy Harvesting Based Sensor Networks

This paper analyzes a throughput performance of a wireless powered energy-constrained sensor network consisting of a single base station (BS) and multiple wireless sensor nodes (SNs). The lifetime of the SNs battery is prolonged by harvesting energy from radio frequency (RF). During the downlink (DL) transmissions, BS transmits energy and information signal to the SNs. A time switching (TS) protocol is employed in the SNs to switch from energy harvesting state to a transmission /receiving state. The harvested energy from the DL signal is utilized during uplink (UL) data transmissions of SNs. Traditional time-division-multiple-access (TDMA) has been implemented to avoid the collision due to the simultaneous UL transmission by multiple SNs. The performance of the wireless sensor network in terms of UL and DL sum-throughput has been analyzed. The simulation results validate that the throughput of SNs primarily depends on the duration of energy harvesting time and there exist an optimal energy harvesting time for each SN.