Energy-Efficient Antenna Selection and Power Allocation for Large-Scale Multiple Antenna Systems with Hybrid Energy Supply

The combination of energy harvesting and large-scale multiple antenna technologies provides a promising solution for improving the energy efficiency (EE) by exploiting renewable energy sources and reducing the transmission power per user and per antenna. However, the introduction of energy harvesting capabilities into large-scale multiple antenna systems poses many new challenges for energy-efficient system design due to the intermittent characteristics of renewable energy sources and limited battery capacity. Furthermore, the total manufacture cost and the sum power of a large number of radio frequency (RF) chains can not be ignored, and it would be impractical to use all the antennas for transmission. In this paper, we propose an energy-efficient antenna selection and power allocation algorithm to maximize the EE subject to the constraint of user's quality of service (QoS). An iterative offline optimization algorithm is proposed to solve the non-convex EE optimization problem by exploiting the properties of nonlinear fractional programming. The relationships among maximum EE, selected antenna number, battery capacity, and EE-SE tradeoff are analyzed and verified through computer simulations.Comment: IEEE Globecom 2014 Selected Areas in Communications Symposium-Green Communications and Computing Trac

On Green Energy Powered Cognitive Radio Networks

Green energy powered cognitive radio (CR) network is capable of liberating the wireless access networks from spectral and energy constraints. The limitation of the spectrum is alleviated by exploiting cognitive networking in which wireless nodes sense and utilize the spare spectrum for data communications, while dependence on the traditional unsustainable energy is assuaged by adopting energy harvesting (EH) through which green energy can be harnessed to power wireless networks. Green energy powered CR increases the network availability and thus extends emerging network applications. Designing green CR networks is challenging. It requires not only the optimization of dynamic spectrum access but also the optimal utilization of green energy. This paper surveys the energy efficient cognitive radio techniques and the optimization of green energy powered wireless networks. Existing works on energy aware spectrum sensing, management, and sharing are investigated in detail. The state of the art of the energy efficient CR based wireless access network is discussed in various aspects such as relay and cooperative radio and small cells. Envisioning green energy as an important energy resource in the future, network performance highly depends on the dynamics of the available spectrum and green energy. As compared with the traditional energy source, the arrival rate of green energy, which highly depends on the environment of the energy harvesters, is rather random and intermittent. To optimize and adapt the usage of green energy according to the opportunistic spectrum availability, we discuss research challenges in designing cognitive radio networks which are powered by energy harvesters

A Lyapunov Optimization Approach for Green Cellular Networks with Hybrid Energy Supplies

Powering cellular networks with renewable energy sources via energy harvesting (EH) has recently been proposed as a promising solution for green networking. However, with intermittent and random energy arrivals, it is challenging to provide satisfactory quality of service (QoS) in EH networks. To enjoy the greenness brought by EH while overcoming the instability of the renewable energy sources, hybrid energy supply (HES) networks that are powered by both EH and the electric grid have emerged as a new paradigm for green communications. In this paper, we will propose new design methodologies for HES green cellular networks with the help of Lyapunov optimization techniques. The network service cost, which addresses both the grid energy consumption and achievable QoS, is adopted as the performance metric, and it is optimized via base station assignment and power control (BAPC). Our main contribution is a low-complexity online algorithm to minimize the long-term average network service cost, namely, the Lyapunov optimization-based BAPC (LBAPC) algorithm. One main advantage of this algorithm is that the decisions depend only on the instantaneous side information without requiring distribution information of channels and EH processes. To determine the network operation, we only need to solve a deterministic per-time slot problem, for which an efficient inner-outer optimization algorithm is proposed. Moreover, the proposed algorithm is shown to be asymptotically optimal via rigorous analysis. Finally, sample simulation results are presented to verify the theoretical analysis as well as validate the effectiveness of the proposed algorithm.Comment: 15 pages, 8 figures, to appear in IEEE Journal on Selected Areas in Communication

Dynamic Cross-Layer Beamforming in Hybrid Powered Communication Systems With Harvest-Use-Trade Strategy

The application of renewable energy is a promising solution to realize the Green Communications. However, if the cellular systems are solely powered by the renewable energy, the weather dependence of the renewable energy arrival makes the systems unstable. On the other hand, the proliferation of the smart grid facilitates the loads with two-way energy trading capability. Hence, a hybrid powered cellular system, which combines the smart grid with the base stations, can reduce the grid energy expenditure and improve the utilization efficiency of the renewable energy. In this paper, the long-term grid energy expenditure minimization problem is formulated as a stochastic optimization model. By leveraging the stochastic optimization theory, we reformulate the stochastic optimization problem as a \mbox{per-frame} grid energy plus weighted penalized packet rate minimization problem, which is NP-hard. As a result, two suboptimal algorithms, which jointly consider the effects of the channel quality and the packet reception failure, are proposed based on the successive approximation beamforming (SABF) technique and the \mbox{zero-forcing} beamforming (ZFBF) technique. The convergence properties of the proposed suboptimal algorithms are established, and the corresponding computational complexities are analyzed. Simulation results show that the proposed SABF algorithm outperforms the ZFBF algorithm in both grid energy expenditure and packet delay. By tuning a control parameter, the grid energy expenditure can be traded for the packet delay under the proposed stochastic optimization model.Comment: accepted by IEEE Trans. Wireless Commu

Wireless Information and Power Transfer Design for Energy Cooperation Distributed Antenna Systems

Distributed antenna systems (DAS) have been widely implemented in state-of-the-art cellular communication systems to cover dead spots. Recent studies have also indicated that DAS have advantages in wireless energy transfer (WET). In this paper, we study simultaneous wireless information and power transfer (SWIPT) for a multiple-input single-output (MISO) DAS in the downlink which consists of arbitrarily distributed remote antenna units (RAUs). In order to save the energy cost, we adopt energy cooperation of energy harvesting (EH) and two-way energy flows to let the RAUs trade their harvested energy through the smart grid network. Under individual EH constraints, per-RAU power constraints and various smart grid considerations, we investigate a power management strategy that determines how to utilize the stochastically spatially distributed harvested energy at the RAUs and how to trade the energy with the smart grid simultaneously to supply maximum wireless information transfer (WIT) with a minimum WET constraint for a receiver adopting power splitting (PS). Our analysis shows that the optimal design can be achieved in two steps. The first step is to maximize a new objective that can simultaneously maximize both WET and WIT, considering both the smart grid profitable and smart grid neutral cases. For the grid-profitable case, we derive the optimal full power strategy and provide a closed-form result to see under what condition this strategy is used. On the other hand, for the grid-neutral case, we illustrate that the optimal power policy has a double-threshold structure and present an optimal allocation strategy. The second step is then to solve the whole problem by obtaining the splitting power ratio based on the minimum WET constraint. Simulation results are provided to evaluate the performance under various settings and characterize the double-threshold structure.Comment: 11 pages, 7 figure

Ambient RF Energy Harvesting in Ultra-Dense Small Cell Networks: Performance and Trade-offs

In order to minimize electric grid power consumption, energy harvesting from ambient RF sources is considered as a promising technique for wireless charging of low-power devices. To illustrate the design considerations of RF-based ambient energy harvesting networks, this article first points out the primary challenges of implementing and operating such networks, including non-deterministic energy arrival patterns, energy harvesting mode selection, energy-aware cooperation among base stations (BSs), etc. A brief overview of the recent advancements and a summary of their shortcomings are then provided to highlight existing research gaps and possible future research directions. To this end, we investigate the feasibility of implementing RF-based ambient energy harvesting in ultra-dense small cell networks (SCNs) and examine the related trade-offs in terms of the energy efficiency and signal-to-interference-plus-noise ratio (SINR) outage probability of a typical user in the downlink. Numerical results demonstrate the significance of deploying a mixture of on-grid small base stations (SBSs)~(powered by electric grid) and off-grid SBSs~(powered by energy harvesting) and optimizing their corresponding proportions as a function of the intensity of active SBSs in the network.Comment: IEEE Wireless Communications, to appea

FreeNet: Spectrum and Energy Harvesting Wireless Networks

The dramatic mobile data traffic growth is not only resulting in the spectrum crunch but is also leading to exorbitant energy consumption. It is thus desirable to liberate mobile and wireless networks from the constraint of the spectrum scarcity and to rein in the growing energy consumption. This article introduces FreeNet, figuratively synonymous to "Free Network", which engineers the spectrum and energy harvesting techniques to alleviate the spectrum and energy constraints by sensing and harvesting spare spectrum for data communications and utilizing renewable energy as power supplies, respectively. Hence, FreeNet increases the spectrum and energy efficiency of wireless networks and enhances the network availability. As a result, FreeNet can be deployed to alleviate network congestion in urban areas, provision broadband services in rural areas, and upgrade emergency communication capacity. This article provides a brief analysis of the design of FreeNet that accommodates the dynamics of the spare spectrum and employs renewable energy

Energy-Efficient Resource Allocation in OFDMA Systems with Hybrid Energy Harvesting Base Station

We study resource allocation algorithm design for energy-efficient communication in an OFDMA downlink network with hybrid energy harvesting base station. Specifically, an energy harvester and a constant energy source driven by a non-renewable resource are used for supplying the energy required for system operation. We first consider a deterministic offline system setting. In particular, assuming availability of non-causal knowledge about energy arrivals and channel gains, an offline resource allocation problem is formulated as a non-convex optimization problem taking into account the circuit energy consumption, a finite energy storage capacity, and a minimum required data rate. We transform this non-convex optimization problem into a convex optimization problem by applying time-sharing and fractional programming which results in an efficient asymptotically optimal offline iterative resource allocation algorithm. In each iteration, the transformed problem is solved by using Lagrange dual decomposition. The obtained resource allocation policy maximizes the weighted energy efficiency of data transmission. Subsequently, we focus on online algorithm design. A stochastic dynamic programming approach is employed to obtain the optimal online resource allocation algorithm which requires a prohibitively high complexity. To strike a balance between system performance and computational complexity, we propose a low complexity suboptimal online iterative algorithm which is motivated by the offline optimization.Comment: 32 pages, 7 figures, and 1 table. Submitted for possible journal publication in 201

Dynamic Base Station Operation in Large-Scale Green Cellular Networks

In this paper, to minimize the on-grid energy cost in a large-scale green cellular network, we jointly design the optimal base station (BS) on/off operation policy and the on-grid energy purchase policy from a network-level perspective. Due to the fluctuations of the on-grid energy prices, the harvested renewable energy, and the network traffic loads over time, as well as the BS coordination to hand over the traffic offloaded from the inactive BSs to the active BSs, it is generally NP-hard to find a network-level optimal adaptation policy that can minimize the on-grid energy cost over a long-term and yet assures the downlink transmission quality at the same time. Aiming at the network-level dynamic system design, we jointly apply stochastic geometry (Geo) for large-scale green cellular network analysis and dynamic programming (DP) for adaptive BS on/off operation design and on-grid energy purchase design, and thus propose a new Geo-DP design approach. By this approach, we obtain the optimal BS on/off policy, which shows that the optimal BSs' active operation probability in each horizon is just sufficient to assure the required downlink transmission quality with time-varying load in the large-scale cellular network. We also propose a suboptimal on-grid energy purchase policy with low-complexity, where the low-price on-grid energy is over-purchased in the current horizon only when the current storage level and the future renewable energy level are both low. We compare the proposed policy with the existing schemes and show that our proposed policy can more efficiently save the on-grid energy cost over time.Comment: Submitted for possible journal publication. 29 pages, 6 figures, and 1 tabl

Secure and Green SWIPT in Distributed Antenna Networks with Limited Backhaul Capacity

This paper studies the resource allocation algorithm design for secure information and renewable green energy transfer to mobile receivers in distributed antenna communication systems. In particular, distributed remote radio heads (RRHs/antennas) are connected to a central processor (CP) via capacity-limited backhaul links to facilitate joint transmission. The RRHs and the CP are equipped with renewable energy harvesters and share their energies via a lossy micropower grid for improving the efficiency in conveying information and green energy to mobile receivers via radio frequency (RF) signals. The considered resource allocation algorithm design is formulated as a mixed non-convex and combinatorial optimization problem taking into account the limited backhaul capacity and the quality of service requirements for simultaneous wireless information and power transfer (SWIPT). We aim at minimizing the total network transmit power when only imperfect channel state information of the wireless energy harvesting receivers, which have to be powered by the wireless network, is available at the CP. In light of the intractability of the problem, we reformulate it as an optimization problem with binary selection, which facilitates the design of an iterative resource allocation algorithm to solve the problem optimally using the generalized Bender's decomposition (GBD). Furthermore, a suboptimal algorithm is proposed to strike a balance between computational complexity and system performance. Simulation results illustrate that the proposed GBD based algorithm obtains the global optimal solution and the suboptimal algorithm achieves a close-to-optimal performance. Besides, the distributed antenna network for SWIPT with renewable energy sharing is shown to require a lower transmit power compared to a traditional system with multiple co-located antennas.Comment: accepted for publication, IEEE Transactions on Wireless Communications, May 10, 201