Finite horizon online lazy scheduling with energy harvesting transmitters over fading channels

Lazy scheduling, i.e. setting transmit power and rate in response to data traffic as low as possible while satisfying delay constraints, is a known formulation of energy efficient transmission. Solutions exist for offline and infinite-horizon online versions of the problem. This paper addresses the finite horizon online transmission scheduling problem under stochastic packet arrival, energy harvesting and channel variation processes. The main contribution is a mechanism to obtain an online algorithm using explicit closed form expressions of the derived offline optimal policy. The resulting low complexity online algorithm attains near-optimal performance, not only asymptotically, but also in the practically interesting short term.