Energy Harvesting Wireless Communications: A Review of Recent Advances

This article summarizes recent contributions in the broad area of energy harvesting wireless communications. In particular, we provide the current state of the art for wireless networks composed of energy harvesting nodes, starting from the information-theoretic performance limits to transmission scheduling policies and resource allocation, medium access and networking issues. The emerging related area of energy transfer for self-sustaining energy harvesting wireless networks is considered in detail covering both energy cooperation aspects and simultaneous energy and information transfer. Various potential models with energy harvesting nodes at different network scales are reviewed as well as models for energy consumption at the nodes.Comment: To appear in the IEEE Journal of Selected Areas in Communications (Special Issue: Wireless Communications Powered by Energy Harvesting and Wireless Energy Transfer

MDP-Based Scheduling Design for Mobile-Edge Computing Systems with Random User Arrival

In this paper, we investigate the scheduling design of a mobile-edge computing (MEC) system, where the random arrival of mobile devices with computation tasks in both spatial and temporal domains is considered. The binary computation offloading model is adopted. Every task is indivisible and can be computed at either the mobile device or the MEC server. We formulate the optimization of task offloading decision, uplink transmission device selection and power allocation in all the frames as an infinite-horizon Markov decision process (MDP). Due to the uncertainty in device number and location, conventional approximate MDP approaches to addressing the curse of dimensionality cannot be applied. A novel low-complexity sub-optimal solution framework is then proposed. We first introduce a baseline scheduling policy, whose value function can be derived analytically. Then, one-step policy iteration is adopted to obtain a sub-optimal scheduling policy whose performance can be bounded analytically. Simulation results show that the gain of the sub-optimal policy over various benchmarks is significant.Comment: 6 pages, 3 figures; accepted by Globecom 2019; title changed to better describe the work, introduction condensed, typos correcte

Optimal Multiuser Scheduling Schemes for Simultaneous Wireless Information and Power Transfer

In this paper, we study the downlink multiuser scheduling problem for systems with simultaneous wireless information and power transfer (SWIPT). We design optimal scheduling algorithms that maximize the long-term average system throughput under different fairness requirements, such as proportional fairness and equal throughput fairness. In particular, the algorithm designs are formulated as non-convex optimization problems which take into account the minimum required average sum harvested energy in the system. The problems are solved by using convex optimization techniques and the proposed optimization framework reveals the tradeoff between the long-term average system throughput and the sum harvested energy in multiuser systems with fairness constraints. Simulation results demonstrate that substantial performance gains can be achieved by the proposed optimization framework compared to existing suboptimal scheduling algorithms from the literature.Comment: Accepted for presentation at the European Signal Processing Conference 201

Energy-efficient wireless communication

In this chapter we present an energy-efficient highly adaptive network interface architecture and a novel data link layer protocol for wireless networks that provides Quality of Service (QoS) support for diverse traffic types. Due to the dynamic nature of wireless networks, adaptations in bandwidth scheduling and error control are necessary to achieve energy efficiency and an acceptable quality of service. In our approach we apply adaptability through all layers of the protocol stack, and provide feedback to the applications. In this way the applications can adapt the data streams, and the network protocols can adapt the communication parameters

Octopus - an energy-efficient architecture for wireless multimedia systems

Multimedia computing and mobile computing are two trends that will lead to a new application domain in the near future. However, the technological challenges to establishing this paradigm of computing are non-trivial. Personal mobile computing offers a vision of the future with a much richer and more exciting set of architecture research challenges than extrapolations of the current desktop architectures. In particular, these devices will have limited battery resources, will handle diverse data types, and will operate in environments that are insecure, dynamic and which vary significantly in time and location. The approach we made to achieve such a system is to use autonomous, adaptable modules, interconnected by a switch rather than by a bus, and to offload as much as work as possible from the CPU to programmable modules that is placed in the data streams. A reconfigurable internal communication network switch called Octopus exploits locality of reference and eliminates wasteful data copies

Design techniques for low-power systems

Portable products are being used increasingly. Because these systems are battery powered, reducing power consumption is vital. In this report we give the properties of low-power design and techniques to exploit them on the architecture of the system. We focus on: minimizing capacitance, avoiding unnecessary and wasteful activity, and reducing voltage and frequency. We review energy reduction techniques in the architecture and design of a hand-held computer and the wireless communication system including error control, system decomposition, communication and MAC protocols, and low-power short range networks