Opportunistic Multi-Channel Access in Heterogeneous Networks with Renewable Energy Supplies

The heterogeneous system, where small networks (e.g., femtocell or WiFi) boost the system capacity under the umbrella of a large network (e.g., cellular systems), is a promising architecture for the next generation wireless communication systems. In addition, energy harvesting (EH) based green communication is one key next-generation technology. In this paper, we study an uplink transmission scenario under such a heterogeneous network hierarchy, where each mobile user (MU) is powered by a sustainable energy supply and has deterministic access to the large network via one private channel, but only dynamic access to a small network with certain probability via one common channel shared by multiple MUs. Considering a general EH model, i.e., energy arrivals are time-correlated, we study an opportunistic transmission scheme and aim to maximize the average throughput for each MU, which jointly exploits the statistics and current states of the channel, battery, and EH rate, together with the availability to the common channel. Applying a simple yet efficient “save-then-transmit” scheme, the throughput maximization problem is cast as a “rate-of-return” optimal stopping problem. The optimal solution is investigated for the general Markovian channel states and energy arrivals, followed by the independent and identically distributed (i.i.d.) case. As performance benchmarks, the optimal and some suboptimal power allocation schemes with conventional constant power supplies are also examined.

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