Network Operation Planning in Energy Harvesting Self-Powered Wireless Multi-hop Settings

Green operation is of paramount importance in 6G and zero-energy wireless nodes can support it. To fully exploit the potentials of zero-energy wireless multi-hop networks, it is essential to jointly optimize their source data rates, routing and transmission power decisions, which is a significantly complex problem, in particular under the uncertainties introduced by the wireless channel states and the energy harvesting processes on the nodes. In this paper, we tackle the aforementioned problem under the assumption that wireless nodes operate only based on their batteries that charge solely via ambient energy harvesting. A plan for the network operation for a future time horizon is computed using scenario-based optimization techniques to account for stochasticities. The derived problem formulation is non-convex and is solved via a novel heuristic method that iteratively solves appropriately parameterized convex approximations of the original problem. At convergence, the obtained solution is feasible to the original non-convex problem. Numerical results illustrate the effectiveness of the proposed solution compared to the standard non-convex solver Ipopt and showcase the behavior of the network under heterogeneous scenarios.