We study a sensor node with an energy harvesting source. The generated energy
can be stored in a buffer. The sensor node periodically senses a random field
and generates a packet. These packets are stored in a queue and transmitted
using the energy available at that time. We obtain energy management policies
that are throughput optimal, i.e., the data queue stays stable for the largest
possible data rate. Next we obtain energy management policies which minimize
the mean delay in the queue.We also compare performance of several easily
implementable sub-optimal energy management policies. A greedy policy is
identified which, in low SNR regime, is throughput optimal and also minimizes
mean delay.Comment: Submitted to the IEEE Transactions on Wireless Communications; 22
pages with 10 figure