Optimal algorithms for energy harvesting based systems with circuit power considerations

Abstract

Recently, an elegant method to alleviate the shortcomings of battery-powered (BP) sensor nodes has been introduced in the form of energy harvesting (EH), where the nodes scavenge the energy from ambient sources. Optimal scheduling algorithms, either to minimize transmission completion time or to maximize short-term throughput, for such networks under the deterministic energy and data arrival profiles are extensively studied in the literature. In this work, we revisited the existing optimal algorithms under practical energy cost considerations: circuit power consumption and sleep-to-wakeup power consumption. Next, we found that the direct application of the state-of-the-art algorithms led to sub-optimality. Finally, we proposed suitable adaptations to regain optimality.