Joint Power Control and Time Allocation for WBANs with RF Energy Harvesting

Abstract

Energy harvesting Wireless Body Area Network (WBANs) where sensor nodes can harvest energy from their ambient environment have attracted considerable attention recently. However, how to control transmission power of energy source and charging duration to maximizing the sum of transmission rate has not been addressed systematically. In order to bridge this gap, we devote this paper to developing an optimal joint power control and time allocation scheme with the objective to maximize the sum of data transmission rate for WBANs with RF energy harvesting. To this end, we first formulate an optimization problem maximizing the sum of data transmission rate with constraint of the transmission power and interference power. The formulated problem is non-convex optimization, so we transform it into three solvable convex subproblems. We then design an optimal scheme by jointing power control and time allocation and compare it with two reference schemes. The simulation results demonstrate that our proposed optimal scheme performs best in terms of the sum of data transmission rate.