Optimal energy-efficient transmission for fading channels with an energy harvesting transmitter

This paper investigates the optimal energy-efficient transmission policy of multi-channels in energy harvesting systems. We configure the transmitter with the active mode in which the energy cost includes the basic operation cost and transmission cost and signal processing cost, while with the sleep mode only counting the basic operation cost. Then the energy efficiency maximization problem of joint transmission time and power allocation is formulated and studied in the offline manner. Based on the fractional optimization theory, we transform the original fractional optimization problem into a series of subtractive-form optimization problems which are then further transformed into convex optimization problems. Then characteristics of the optimal solution are described based on the analysis of transmission time and power allocation. Finally, a special case without considering the basic operation cost as previous works assumed is studied. We find that the optimal policy results a best subchannel scheduling which can be viewed as the peaky transmission. Through this, the energy cost of the sleep mode in previous case can be interpreted as the switching operation cost.