Energy Reallocation in a Multi-User Network With a Shared Harvesting Module and Storage Battery

This work considers a novel multi-user system where transmitter nodes have shared access to a common energy harvesting (EH) module and storage battery. Users do not possess individual EH modules and can only withdraw energy from the shared battery which has a randomly varying energy level. An auction-based centralized energy allocation mechanism is proposed with the objective of maximizing the system social welfare. It is shown analytically that the mechanism converges to a unique maximum, is Pareto optimal, and truthful. Simulations show that overall, it outperforms uniform and incremental energy allocation for a range of scenarios.