Broadcasting with a battery limited energy harvesting rechargeable transmitter

We consider the minimization of the transmission completion time with a battery limited energy harvesting transmitter in a two-user AWGN broadcast channel. The transmitter has fixed number of packets for each receiver and energy is modeled to arrive (be harvested) at the transmitter at random instants. The battery at the transmitter has a finite storage capacity, hence energy may overflow without being utilized for data transmission. We derive the optimal offline transmission policy that minimizes the time by which all of the data packets are delivered to their respective destinations. We analyze the structural properties of the optimal transmission policy using a dual problem. We find the optimal total transmit power sequence by a directional water-filling algorithm. We prove that there exists a cut-off power level such that if the allocated power is lower than this level, then only the stronger user is served in that epoch; otherwise, the power above this level is allocated to the weaker user. Based on these properties, we propose an algorithm that gives the globally optimal offline policy. The proposed algorithm uses directional water-filling repetitively.