Access Control for Energy Constrained Devices

Radio frequency (RF) signals are capable of simultaneously transferring data and energy from a hybrid access point (HAP) toward battery-powered and batteryless wireless devices. Battery-powered and batteryless wireless devices with the capability of RF energy harvesting need a distributed access control protocol with collision avoidance to achieve higher energy efficiency. We study the performance of a data and energy integrated network (DEIN) that adopts an enhanced carrier sensing multiple access with collision avoidance (CSMA/CA) protocol. Each device in this network can switch to RF energy harvesting mode or data reception mode according to HAP’s instruction and freezes its backoff counter when energy storage is insufficient. By invoking a three-dimensional (3D) Markov chain, we model the operating behaviors of batteryless wireless devices and an HAP in a DEIN. Apart from backoff operations of devices, the 3D Markov chain also depicts their dynamic energy changes, including RF energy harvesting and energy consumption. Wireless devices consume energy harvested from the HAP’s downlink transmissions for powering their data upload and random backoff. With the aid of the 3D Markov chain, the upload throughput of devices can be obtained in semi-closed-form. Moreover, a decoupling method is proposed to approximate throughput performance with low complexity. The accuracy of our theoretical model is validated by simulation results. By characterizing the impact of various parameters on throughput performance, a design guideline for a DEIN with a distributed batteryless access protocol is provided.