HAKAN ERKAL , OPTIMIZATION OF ENERGY HARVESTING WIRELESS COMMUNICATION SYSTEMS , 2011

  In an energy harvesting communication system, energy is derived from outside sources and becomes partially available at dierent points in time. The constraints induced by this property on energy consumption plays an active role in the design of ecient communication systems. This thesis focuses on the optimal design of transmission and networking schemes for energy harvesting wireless communication systems. In particular, an energy harvesting transmitter broadcasting data to two receivers in an AWGN broadcast channel assuming that energy harvests and data arrivals occur at known instants is considered. In this system, optimal packet scheduling that achieves minimum delay is analyzed. An iterative algorithm, DuOpt, that achieves the same structural properties as the optimal schedule is proposed. DuOpt is proved to obtain the optimal solution when weaker user data is ready at the beginning. A dual problem is defined and shown to be strictly convex. Taking advantage of the dual problem, uniqueness of the solution of primal problem is proved. Finally, it is observed that DuOpt is almost two orders of magnitude faster than the SUMT (sequential unconstrained minimization technique) algorithm that solves the same problem.