Decentralized Energy Allocation for Wireless Networks with Renewable Energy Powered Base Stations

TL;DR

This paper models decentralized energy management in renewable-powered wireless base stations, analyzing strategic interactions and proposing mechanisms to improve system efficiency and truthful demand reporting.

Contribution

It introduces a noncooperative game framework for decentralized energy allocation and proposes incentive mechanisms to align individual strategies with system-wide optimal performance.

Findings

Nash equilibrium strategies identified for decentralized decisions

Linear contracts can coordinate system for optimal performance

Incentive mechanisms ensure truthful demand reporting

Abstract

In this paper, a green wireless communication system in which base stations are powered by renewable energy sources is considered. This system consists of a capacity-constrained renewable power supplier (RPS) and a base station (BS) that faces a predictable random connection demand from mobile user equipments (UEs). In this model, the BS powered via a combination of a renewable power source and the conventional electric grid, seeks to specify the renewable power inventory policy, i.e., the power storage level. On the other hand, the RPS must strategically choose the energy amount that is supplied to the BS. An M/M/1 make-to-stock queuing model is proposed to investigate the decentralized decisions when the two parties optimize their individual costs in a noncooperative manner. The problem is formulated as a noncooperative game whose Nash equilibrium (NE) strategies are characterized in order to identify the causes of inefficiency in the decentralized operation. A set of simple linear contracts are introduced to coordinate the system so as to achieve an optimal system performance. The proposed approach is then extended to a setting with one monopolistic RPS and N BSs that are privately informed of their optimal energy inventory levels. In this scenario, we show that the widely-used proportional allocation mechanism is no longer socially optimal. In order to make the BSs truthfully report their energy demand, an incentive compatible (IC) mechanism is proposed for our model.