Throughput of Myopic Policy in Energy Harvesting Sensor Network for Environmental Monitoring

This study investigates an environmental data gathering problem in a single-hop sensor network where a fusion center (FC) consolidates data from M energy-harvesting (EH) sensors. Accumulated data and energy are stored without loss at indefinitely capacious data buffer and battery in every sensor. At a time interval, FC designates K EH sensors to transmit data via its orthogonal channels. It is not directly informed about buffer and battery states of any EH sensor or metrics of their energy collection or data arrival activities. FC retains just outcomes of previous transmission endeavors. Sensors are considered to be experiencing data backlog, with no battery leakage and errorfree communication. An EH sensor can send data to FC at designated times, depending on whether it has adequate energy for transmission. We examine the mean throughput of myopic policy (MP) using not only analytical but also numerical approaches, emphasizing average throughput criteria. We illustrate that MP is optimal for a particular class of EH devices, yet it is inadequate for a broader spectrum of such EH and DA processes.