Performance Analysis for Energy Harvesting Communication Systems: From Throughput to Energy Diversity

Li, Hang; Huang, Chuan; Alsaadi, Fuad E.; Cui, Shuguang

doi:10.1109/glocom.2015.7417072

Cited by 2 publications

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Multiuser Gain in Energy Harvesting Wireless Communications

Huang

Cui

2017

IEEE Access

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Energy harvesting communication has raised great research interests due to its wide applications and feasibility of commercialization. In this paper, we investigate the multiuser energy diversity. Specifically, we reveal the throughput gain coming from the increase of total available energy harvested over time/space and from the combined dynamics of batteries. Considering both centralized and distributed access schemes, the scaling of the average throughput over the number of transmitters is studied, along with the scaling of corresponding available energy in the batteries. Index TermsEnergy harvesting, energy diversity, multi-user, throughput, scaling. 2 number of users has been studied in [2], [3], and the scaling of the throughput over the number of users was shown to be on the order of O(log(N) + log log(N)) [2].Obviously, if all users have identical additive Gaussian channels, there is no multiuser diversity gain, given that all signal channels are the same and the transmission power is constant. However, when powered by energy harvesters, transmitters may have different battery levels because the energy harvesting (EH) rates are random. Then, the variation of battery levels among different users may result in a potential throughput gain over the benchmark, i.e., a point-to-point EH communication system.In this paper, we revisit the concept of multiuser diversity in EH communications. It is in recent years that harvesting energy from ambient energy sources (e.g., solar, wind, or vibration) has been realized, and enjoys wide applications in the next generation of wireless communication systems, e.g., Internet of Things [4] and heterogeneous networks [5]. Compared against systems with the conventional power supplies that convert fossil fuels into electric energy, EH-based systems are not only more environment friendly, but also more cost-effective by cutting down the service provider utility bills [6].Despite the promising potential, there are two major challenges that hold back the operation of EH wireless systems.• EH Uncertainty. The power generated by EH is non-deterministic in general due to the dynamic and intermittent characteristics of renewable energy sources, which may not provide

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