Finite-Horizon Optimal Transmission Policies for Energy Harvesting Sensors

TL;DR

This paper develops optimal transmission strategies for energy harvesting sensors over finite periods, including single and multiple sensor scenarios, with explicit threshold policies derived for efficient energy use and interference management.

Contribution

It introduces explicit threshold-based optimal policies for both single and multiple energy harvesting sensors over finite horizons.

Findings

Optimal threshold policies are derived for single sensors.

Explicit policies are formulated for multi-sensor transmission with interference constraints.

Thresholds can be precomputed efficiently using recursion.

Abstract

In this paper, we derive optimal transmission policies for energy harvesting sensors to maximize the utility obtained over a finite horizon. First, we consider a single energy harvesting sensor, with discrete energy arrival process, and a discrete energy consumption policy. Under this model, we show that the optimal finite horizon policy is a threshold policy, and explicitly characterize the thresholds, and the thresholds can be precomputed using a recursion. Next, we address the case of multiple sensors, with only one of them allowed to transmit at any given time to avoid interference, and derive an explicit optimal policy for this scenario as well.