On Communications under Stochastic Energy Harvesting with Noisy Channel State Information

Abstract

In energy harvesting communications, the transmitters have to adapt transmission to the availability of energy harvested during communication. The performance of the transmission depends on the channel conditions which vary randomly due environmental changes. In this paper, we consider the problem of power allocation taking into account the energy arrivals over time and imperfect channel state information (CSI) available at the transmitter, in order to maximize the throughput. Differently from previous work, the CSI at the transmitter is not perfect and may include estimation errors. We solve this problem with respect to energy harvesting constraints. We determine the optimal power policy in the case where the channel is perfectly known at the receiver. Furthermore, a study of the asymptotic behavior of the communication system is proposed. Specifically, we analyze the average throughput (AT) in a system where the average recharge rate (ARR) is asymptotically small and when it is very high. Selected numerical results are provided to illustrate our analysis.