Energy Cooperation in Energy Harvesting Communication Systems

In energy harvesting communications, users transmit messages using energy harvested from nature. In such systems, transmission policies of the users need to be carefully designed according to the energy arrival profiles. When the energy management policies are optimized, the resulting performance of the system depends only on the energy arrival profiles. In this dissertation, we introduce and analyze the notion of energy cooperation in energy harvesting communications where users can share a portion of their harvested energy with the other users via wireless energy transfer. This energy cooperation enables us to control and optimize the energy arrivals at users to the extent possible. In the classical setting of cooperation, users help each other in the transmission of their data by exploiting the broadcast nature of wireless communications and the resulting overheard information. In contrast to the usual notion of cooperation, which is at the signal level, energy cooperation we introduce here is at the battery energy level. In a multi-user setting, energy may be abundant in one user in which case the loss incurred by transferring it to another user may be less than the gain it yields for the other user. It is this cooperation that we explore in this dissertation for several multi-user scenarios, where energy can be transferred from one user to another through a separate wireless energy transfer unit. We first consider the offline optimal energy management problem for several basic multi-user network structures with energy harvesting transmitters and one-way wireless energy transfer. In energy harvesting transmitters, energy arrivals in time impose energy causality constraints on the transmission policies of the users. In the presence of wireless energy transfer, energy causality constraints take a new form: energy can flow in time from the past to the future for each user, and from one user to the other at each time. This requires a careful joint management of energy flow in two separate dimensions, and different management policies are required depending on how users share the common wireless medium and interact over it. In this context, we analyze several basic multi-user energy harvesting network structures with wireless energy transfer. To capture the main trade-offs and insights that arise due to wireless energy transfer, we focus our attention on simple two- and three-user communication systems, such as the relay channel, multiple access channel and the two-way channel. Next, we focus on the delay minimization problem for networks. We consider a general network topology of energy harvesting and energy cooperating nodes. Each node harvests energy from nature and all nodes may share a portion of their harvested energies with neighboring nodes through energy cooperation. We consider the joint data routing and capacity assignment problem for this setting under fixed data and energy routing topologies. We determine the joint routing of energy and data in a general multi-user scenario with data and energy transfer. Next, we consider the cooperative energy harvesting diamond channel, where the source and two relays harvest energy from nature and the physical layer is modeled as a concatenation of a broadcast and a multiple access channel. Since the broadcast channel is degraded, one of the relays has the message of the other relay. Therefore, the multiple access channel is an extended multiple access channel with common data. We determine the optimum power and rate allocation policies of the users in order to maximize the end-to-end throughput of this system. Finally, we consider the two-user cooperative multiple access channel with energy harvesting users. The users cooperate at the physical layer (data cooperation) by establishing common messages through overheard signals and then cooperatively sending them. For this channel model, we investigate the effect of intermittent data arrivals to the users. We find the optimal offline transmit power and rate allocation policy that maximize the departure region. When the users can further cooperate at the battery level (energy cooperation), we find the jointly optimal offline transmit power and rate allocation policy together with the energy transfer policy that maximize the departure region

Performance enhancement solutions in wireless communication networks

In this dissertation thesis, we study the new relaying protocols for different wireless network systems. We analyze and evaluate an efficiency of the transmission in terms of the outage probability over Rayleigh fading channels by mathematical analyses. The theoretical analyses are verified by performing Monte Carlo simulations. First, we study the cooperative relaying in the Two-Way Decode-and-Forward (DF) and multi-relay DF scheme for a secondary system to obtain spectrum access along with a primary system. In particular, we proposed the Two-Way DF scheme with Energy Harvesting, and the Two-Way DF Non-orthogonal Multiple Access (NOMA) scheme with digital network coding. Besides, we also investigate the wireless systems with multi-relay; the best relay selection is presented to optimize the effect of the proposed scheme. The transmission protocols of the proposed schemes EHAF (Energy Harvesting Amplify and Forward) and EHDF (Energy Harvesting Decode and Forward) are compared together in the same environment and in term of outage probability. Hence, with the obtained results, we conclude that the proposed schemes improve the performance of the wireless cooperative relaying systems, particularly their throughput. Second, we focus on investigating the NOMA technology and proposing the optimal solutions (protocols) to advance the data rate and to ensure the Quality of Service (QoS) for the users in the next generation of wireless communications. In this thesis, we propose a Two-Way DF NOMA scheme (called a TWNOMA protocol) in which an intermediate relay helps two source nodes to communicate with each other. Simulation and analysis results show that the proposed protocol TWNOMA is improving the data rate when comparing with a conventional Two-Way scheme using digital network coding (DNC) (called a TWDNC protocol), Two-Way scheme without using DNC (called a TWNDNC protocol) and Two-Way scheme in amplify-and-forward(AF) relay systems (called a TWANC protocol). Finally, we considered the combination of the NOMA and physical layer security (PLS) in the Underlay Cooperative Cognitive Network (UCCN). The best relay selection strategy is investigated, which uses the NOMA and considers the PLS to enhance the transmission efficiency and secrecy of the new generation wireless networks.V této dizertační práci je provedena studie nových přenosových protokolů pro různé bezdrátové síťové systémy. S využitím matematické analýzy jsme analyzovali a vyhodnotili efektivitu přenosu z hlediska pravděpodobnosti výpadku přes Rayleighův kanál. Teoretické analýzy jsou ověřeny provedenými simulacemi metodou Monte Carlo. Nejprve došlo ke studii kooperativního přenosu ve dvoucestném dekóduj-a-předej (Two-Way Decode-and-Forward–TWDF) a vícecestném DF schématu s větším počtem přenosových uzlů pro sekundární systém, kdy takto byl získán přístup ke spektru spolu s primárním systémem. Konkrétně jsme navrhli dvoucestné DF schéma se získáváním energie a dvoucestné DF neortogonální schéma s mnohonásobným přístupem (Non-orthogonal Multiple Access–NOMA) s digitálním síťovým kódováním. Kromě toho rovněž zkoumáme bezdrátové systémy s větším počtem přenosových uzlů, kde je přítomen výběr nejlepšího přenosového uzlu pro optimalizaci efektivnosti navrženého schématu. Přenosové protokoly navržených schémat EHAF (Energy Harvesting Amplify and Forward) a EHDF(Energy Harvesting Decode and Forward) jsou společně porovnány v identickém prostředí z pohledu pravděpodobnosti výpadku. Následně, na základě získaných výsledků, jsme dospěli k závěru, že navržená schémata vylepšují výkonnost bezdrátových kooperativních systémů, konkrétně jejich propustnost. Dále jsme se zaměřili na zkoumání NOMA technologie a navrhli optimální řešení (protokoly) pro urychlení datového přenosu a zajištění QoS v další generaci bezdrátových komunikací. V této práci jsme navrhli dvoucestné DF NOMA schéma (nazýváno jako TWNOMA protokol), ve kterém mezilehlý přenosový uzel napomáhá dvěma zdrojovým uzlům komunikovat mezi sebou. Výsledky simulace a analýzy ukazují, že navržený protokol TWNOMA vylepšuje dosaženou přenosovou rychlost v porovnání s konvenčním dvoucestným schématem používajícím DNC (TWDNC protokol), dvoucestným schématem bez použití DNC (TWNDNC protokol) a dvoucestným schématem v zesil-a-předej (amplify-and-forward) přenosových systémech (TWANC protokol). Nakonec jsme zvážili využití kombinace NOMA a zabezpečení fyzické vrstvy (Physical Layer Security–PLS) v podpůrné kooperativní kognitivní síti (Underlay Cooperative Cognitive Network–UCCN). Zde je zde zkoumán výběr nejlepšího přenosového uzlu, který užívá NOMA a bere v úvahu PLS pro efektivnější přenos a zabezpečení nové generace bezdrátových sítí.440 - Katedra telekomunikační technikyvyhově

Near Optimal Online Distortion Minimization for Energy Harvesting Nodes

We consider online scheduling for an energy harvesting communication system where a sensor node collects samples from a Gaussian source and sends them to a destination node over a Gaussian channel. The sensor is equipped with a finite-sized battery that is recharged by an independent and identically distributed (i.i.d.) energy harvesting process over time. The goal is to minimize the long term average distortion of the source samples received at the destination. We study two problems: the first is when sampling is cost-free, and the second is when there is a sampling cost incurred whenever samples are collected. We show that fixed fraction policies [Shaviv-Ozgur], in which a fixed fraction of the battery state is consumed in each time slot, are near-optimal in the sense that they achieve a long term average distortion that lies within a constant additive gap from the optimal solution for all energy arrivals and battery sizes. For the problem with sampling costs, the transmission policy is bursty; the sensor can collect samples and transmit for only a portion of the time.Comment: To appear in the 2017 IEEE International Symposium on Information Theor

Wireless Powered Communication: Opportunities and Challenges

The performance of wireless communication is fundamentally constrained by the limited battery life of wireless devices, whose operations are frequently disrupted due to the need of manual battery replacement/recharging. The recent advance in radio frequency (RF) enabled wireless energy transfer (WET) technology provides an attractive solution named wireless powered communication (WPC), where the wireless devices are powered by dedicated wireless power transmitters to provide continuous and stable microwave energy over the air. As a key enabling technology for truly perpetual communications, WPC opens up the potential to build a network with larger throughput, higher robustness, and increased flexibility compared to its battery-powered counterpart. However, the combination of wireless energy and information transmissions also raises many new research problems and implementation issues to be addressed. In this article, we provide an overview of state-of-the-art RF-enabled WET technologies and their applications to wireless communications, with highlights on the key design challenges, solutions, and opportunities ahead.Comment: Accepted for publication by IEEE Communications Magazin

Energy Harvesting Two-Hop Communication Networks

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.Comment: 29 pages, 6 figure

On Information and Energy Cooperation in Energy Harvesting Cognitive Radio

This paper considers the cooperation between primary and secondary users at information and energy levels when both users are energy harvesting nodes. In particular, a secondary transmitter helps relaying the primary message, and in turn, gains the spectrum access as a reward. Also, the primary transmitter supplies energy to the secondary transmitter if the latter is energy-constrained, which facilitates an uninterrupted cooperation. We address this two-level cooperation over a finite horizon with the finite battery constraint at the secondary transmitter. While promising the rate-guaranteed service to both primary and secondary users, we aim to maximize the primary rate. We develop an iterative algorithm that obtains the optimal offline power policies for primary and secondary users. To acquire insights about the structure of the optimal solution, we examine specific scenarios. Furthermore, we investigate the effects of the secondary rate constraint and finite battery on the primary rate and the probability of cooperation. We show that the joint information and energy cooperation increases the chances of cooperation and achieves significant rate gains over only information cooperation.Comment: 6 pages, 4 figures, to be presented in IEEE PIMRC 201

Robust Transmissions in Wireless Powered Multi-Relay Networks with Chance Interference Constraints

In this paper, we consider a wireless powered multi-relay network in which a multi-antenna hybrid access point underlaying a cellular system transmits information to distant receivers. Multiple relays capable of energy harvesting are deployed in the network to assist the information transmission. The hybrid access point can wirelessly supply energy to the relays, achieving multi-user gains from signal and energy cooperation. We propose a joint optimization for signal beamforming of the hybrid access point as well as wireless energy harvesting and collaborative beamforming strategies of the relays. The objective is to maximize network throughput subject to probabilistic interference constraints at the cellular user equipment. We formulate the throughput maximization with both the time-switching and power-splitting schemes, which impose very different couplings between the operating parameters for wireless power and information transfer. Although the optimization problems are inherently non-convex, they share similar structural properties that can be leveraged for efficient algorithm design. In particular, by exploiting monotonicity in the throughput, we maximize it iteratively via customized polyblock approximation with reduced complexity. The numerical results show that the proposed algorithms can achieve close to optimal performance in terms of the energy efficiency and throughput.Comment: 14 pages, 8 figure