DTER: Optimal two-step dual tunnel energy requesting for RF-based energy harvesting system

We propose a new energy harvesting (EH) strategy that uses a dedicated energy source (ES) to optimally replenish energy for radio frequency EH powered wireless devices. Specifically, we develop a two-step dual tunnel energy requesting (DTER) strategy that minimizes the energy consumption on both the EH device and the ES. Besides the causality and capacity constraints that are investigated in the existing approaches, DTER also takes into account the overhead issue and the nonlinear charge characteristics of an energy storage component to make the proposed strategy practical. Both offline and online scenarios are considered in the second step of DTER. To solve the nonlinear optimization problem of the offline scenario, we convert the design of offline optimal energy requesting problem into a classic shortest path problem and thus a global optimal solution can be obtained through dynamic programming algorithms. The online suboptimal transmission strategy is developed as well. Simulation study verifies that the online strategy can achieve almost the same energy efficiency as the global optimal solution in the long term.