We propose a new energy harvesting strategy that uses a dedicated energy
source (ES) to optimally replenish energy for radio frequency (RF) energy
harvesting powered Internet of Things. Specifically, we develop a two-step dual
tunnel energy requesting (DTER) strategy that minimizes the energy consumption
on both the energy harvesting device and the ES. Besides the causality and
capacity constraints that are investigated in the existing approaches, DTER
also takes into account the overhead issue and the nonlinear charge
characteristics of an energy storage component to make the proposed strategy
practical. Both offline and online scenarios are considered in the second step
of DTER. To solve the nonlinear optimization problem of the offline scenario,
we convert the design of offline optimal energy requesting problem into a
classic shortest path problem and thus a global optimal solution can be
obtained through dynamic programming (DP) algorithms. The online suboptimal
transmission strategy is developed as well. Simulation study verifies that the
online strategy can achieve almost the same energy efficiency as the global
optimal solution in the long term