Optimal Time Assignment Policy for Maximizing Throughput in Cognitive Sensor Network with Energy Harvesting

A cognitive sensor network with energy harvesting (EH-CSN) is a promising paradigm to address the issues both in spectrum efficiency and in energy efficiency. The cognitive sensors (CSs) equipped with energy harvesting devices are assumed to operate in a harvesting-sensing-transmission mode and permitted to access the idle licensed frequency bands without causing any harmful jamming to the primary user. By identifying the time fractions of harvesting, sensing, and transmission, we can discuss some design considerations for the EH-CSN. In the meantime, considering the possibility that the primary user may reoccupy the idle channel during the CS’s data transmission duration, we formulate an optimization problem to maximize the average throughput of EH-CSN under a collision constraint and an energy constraint. After deriving the lower and upper bounds of the time fraction for energy harvesting, the uniqueness and existence of the optimal time fraction set have been proved. Finally, our theoretical analysis is also verified through numerical simulations.