An adaptive scheduling scheme for cooperative energy harvesting networks

Energy harvesting devices have been proposed for sensor networking applications where batteries cannot be replaced, and cooperative communication schemes have been used to increase energy efficiency for wireless systems. Here, we develop transmission scheduling schemes for multi-terminal cooperative energy harvesting networks that maximize the packet delivery ratio, i.e., the probability that an event is reported successfully. We see that the proposed scheme provides virtually the same performance as the state-of-the-art threshold-based scheme, but does not require auxiliary parameter optimization. The proposed scheme also permits extensions to multiple cooperating nodes and sources, and it can be modified to accommodate fairness constraints.