Throughput Maximization and Fairness Assurance in Data and Energy Integrated Communication Networks

Abstract

A typical data and energy integrated communication network (DEIN) conceives a conventional base station, which is capable of simultaneously transmitting the data and energy to user equipments (UEs) during the downlink (DL) transmissions by invoking the time-division-multiple-access (TDMA) protocol in the medium access control (MAC) layer. Several UEs operating in this DEIN are capable of harvesting the energy from the DL transmissions by adopting the power splitting (PS) technique and they are also capable of exploiting the harvested energy for powering their uplink (UL) data transmissions by invoking the TDMA protocol in the MAC layer. Both of the UL sum-throughput and the UL fair-throughput of the DEIN is maximized by deciding the duration of each time-slot during the DL/UL transmissions and by determining the optimal PS factor for each UE. Both of these optimization problems are finally solved by the classic method of Lagrange multipliers in close-form. An interesting observation shows that supporting low-throughput data services during the DL transmissions does not degrade the wireless energy transfer and hence does not reduce the throughput of the UL transmissions.