Energy-Aware Resource Allocation With Energy Harvesting In Multi-Layer Heterogeneous Networks

Energy harvesting (EH) is becoming a promising technology for future wireless communication network for its potential in saving nonrenewable energy and making the communication environmentally friendly. However, due to the unpredictable and intermittent nature of energy source, the road to the communication system powered solely by harvested energy is plagued with potholes. Research in applying energy harvesting to heterogeneous network (HetNet) is quite limited. In this paper, we mainly focus on this topic and make several progresses.This paper is organized as follows. Firstly a brief introduction to the characteristics of the system powered by energy harvesting is given, which is the main difference from that powered by traditional grid and brings new energy-efficient resource allocation issues.Secondly we studied a simple HetNet consists of one macro and one small cell to minimize the total grid power consumed in a given period of time. We get the optimum strategy by using the proposed dynamic programming method and get a significant19.4%cutoff comparing to heuristic method by simulations.Thirdly we extended our work to a K-tier SPPP HetNet to study the optimum tier density strategy to minimize the average grid power consumed in a given period of time. We solved the problem using the proposed multi-variable dynamic programming method and showed a21%power cutoff comparing to heuristic method.Finally we conclude this paper with the future for apply EH to HetNet and forecast the research interests.