Minimum energy transmission over a wireless fading channel with packet deadlines

We address transmission of data with deadline constraints over a wireless fading channel. Specifically, the system model consists of a wireless transmitter with data packets arriving to its queue having strict deadline constraints. The transmitter can control the transmission rate over time and the expended power depends on both the chosen rate and the present channel state. The objective is to obtain a rate-control policy that serves the data to meet the deadline constraints while also minimizing the transmission energy expenditure. Using a novel approach based on cumulative curves methodology and continuous-time stochastic control formulation, we obtain the optimal transmission policy under various specific scenarios. Utilizing these results, we then present an energy-efficient policy for the case of arbitrary packet arrivals and deadline constraints, and also give simulation results comparing its performance with a non-adaptive scheme.