Robust Energy Harvesting Based on a Stackelberg Game

TL;DR

This paper models a Stackelberg game for wireless energy harvesting involving a base station and a multi-antenna power beacon, addressing imperfect CSI and providing analytical and bounded solutions for different sensor node scenarios.

Contribution

It introduces a utility function based on throughput non-outage probability and derives equilibrium solutions and bounds for multi-sensor energy harvesting games.

Findings

Analytical solution for a single sensor node case.

Upper and lower bounds for multi-sensor node strategies.

Upper bound is found to be tight through comparison.

Abstract

We study a Stackelberg game between a base station and a multi-antenna power beacon for wireless energy harvesting in a multiple sensor node scenario. Assuming imperfect CSI between the sensor nodes and the power beacon, we propose a utility function that is based on throughput non-outage probability at the base station. We provide an analytical solution for the equilibrium in case of a single sensor node. For the general case consisting of multiple sensor nodes, we provide upper and lower bounds on the power and price (players' strategies). We compare the bounds with solutions resulting from an exhaustive search and a relaxed semidefinite program, and find the upper bound to be tight.