Energy Harvesting Two-Hop Communication Networks

TL;DR

This paper investigates optimal transmission policies for energy harvesting two-hop relay networks, maximizing throughput by considering various transmission modes and system constraints, with solutions derived through convex optimization.

Contribution

It introduces a convex optimization framework for throughput maximization in energy harvesting two-hop networks with multiple relays and analyzes the impact of system parameters.

Findings

Optimal policies depend on energy arrival knowledge and buffer sizes.

Multiple relays and transmission modes significantly affect throughput.

Numerical results demonstrate the benefits of the proposed approach.

Abstract

Energy harvesting multi-hop networks allow for perpetual operation of low cost, limited range wireless devices. Compared with their battery operated counterparts, the coupling of energy and data causality constraints with half duplex relay operation makes it challenging to operate such networks. In this paper, a throughput maximization problem for energy harvesting two-hop networks with decode-and-forward half-duplex relays is investigated. For a system with two parallel relays, various combinations of the following four transmission modes are considered: Broadcast from the source, multi-access from the relays, and successive relaying phases I and II. Optimal transmission policies for one and two parallel relays are studied under the assumption of non-causal knowledge of energy arrivals and finite size relay data buffers. The problem is formulated using a convex optimization framework, which allows for efficient numerical solutions and helps identify important properties of optimal policies. Numerical results are presented to provide throughput comparisons and to investigate the impact of multiple relays, size of relay data buffers, transmission modes, and energy harvesting on the throughput.