Energy Utilization-Aware Operation Control Algorithm in Energy Harvesting Base Stations

Radio frequency (RF) energy transfer has received high attention as a promising technology for wireless sensor networks (WSNs) due to its flexibility of energy supply. However, unplanned RF energy transmissions may lead to increased energy consumption in the main grid. To address this problem, we first develop the energy queuing models for base station (BS) and sensor node (SN). Based on them, we propose an energy utilization-aware operation control algorithm (EU-OCA) to minimize the energy outage probabilities of SNs while maintaining the energy consumption of the main grid below a certain level. In EU-OCA, a controller determines jointly the active/sleep modes and the transmission powers of renewable energy-based BSs with the consideration of the statistical information on the energy arrival of BSs and the energy consumption of SNs. Evaluation results demonstrate that EU-OCA can achieve longer lifetime compared to other BS operation control algorithms while maintaining the energy consumption of the main grid below a target level.