Optimal Energy Management for Energy Harvesting Transmitter and Receiver with Helper

TL;DR

This paper develops optimal energy management strategies for an energy harvesting communication system with a helper node, considering various battery configurations, to maximize data rate using offline policies and iterative algorithms.

Contribution

It introduces a comprehensive framework for optimal energy transfer and power management in EH systems with helper nodes across multiple battery scenarios.

Findings

Helper energy transfer improves data rates.

Optimal policies vary with battery configurations.

Iterative algorithms effectively compute policies.

Abstract

We study energy harvesting (EH) transmitter and receiver, where the receiver decodes data using the harvested energy from the nature and from an independent EH node, named helper. Helper cooperates with the receiver by transferring its harvested energy to the receiver over an orthogonal fading channel. We study an offline optimal power management policy to maximize the reliable information rate. The harvested energy in all three nodes are assumed to be known. We consider four different scenarios; First, for the case that both transmitter and the receiver have batteries, we show that the optimal policy is transferring the helper harvested energy to the receiver, immediately. Next, for the case of non-battery receiver and full power transmitter, we model a virtual EH receiver with minimum energy constraint to achieve an optimal policy. Then, we consider a non-battery EH receiver and EH transmitter with battery. Finally, we derive optimal power management wherein neither the transmitter nor the receiver have batteries. We propose three iterative algorithms to compute optimal energy management policies. Numerical results are presented to corroborate the advantage of employing the helper.