RESOURCE ALLOCATION AND CONTROL IN COMMUNICATION AND

196 Pages·2013·1.98 MB·English

RESOURCE ALLOCATION AND CONTROL IN
COMMUNICATION AND CYBERPHYSICAL
NETWORKS WITH RENEWABLE ENERGY
DISSERTATION
Presented in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree Doctor of
Philosophy in the Graduate School of the Ohio State University
By
Shengbo Chen, M.S.
Graduate Program in Electrical and Computer Engineering
The Ohio State University
2013
Dissertation Committee:
Ness B. Shroff, co-Advisor
Prasun Sinha, co-Advisor
Atilla Eryilmaz
c Copyright by
(cid:13)
Shengbo Chen
2013
ABSTRACT
Renewable energy sources, such as solar and wind power, have been widely used in
variousformsofnetworks, whichincludebothcommunicationnetworksandthesmart
power grid. Since the renewable energy is usually highly fluctuating, the temporal
and spatial dynamics of such sources are often difficult to model and predict. This
makes it extremely challenging to incorporate and operate such energy sources while
maintaining adequate utilization of them. In this thesis, we study the control and
optimization strategies of renewable energy in several network scenarios, including
wireless sensor networks, WiFi networks, and the smart grid.
We first investigate the problem of maximizing the throughput or utility perfor-
manceforawirelesssensornetworkwithrenewableenergy. Thetwosolutionsthatwe
developed here are based on a finite time horizon and an infinite time horizon respec-
tively. Inthefinite-horizonproblem, weproposeasimpleheuristicdistributedscheme
in a rechargeable sensor network with optimal performance under some specific con-
ditions and with provable performance guarantee. Regarding the infinite-horizon
problem, after characterizing the optimal network utility with an upper bound, we
develop a low-complexity online scheme that is asymptotically optimal as network
operation period of time tends to infinite. It shows that by focusing on long-term
system performance, we can greatly simplify computational complexity while main-
taining high performance.
We then study the problem of efficient channel access in WiFi networks, where
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the devices are powered by heterogeneous energy supplies, such as battery, electric
power, and/or renewable energy. We propose a lifetime adjustable design for such
WiFi networks, where each client turns off its radio to save energy when it senses a
busychannel, andsleepsforarandomtimeperiodbeforesensingthechannelagain. It
is proven that our scheme achieves near-optimal proportional-fair utility performance
for single access point (AP) scenarios. Moreover, it also alleviates the near-far effect
and hidden terminal problem in general multiple AP scenarios heuristically.
Beyond the usage in communication networks, renewable energy can be also uti-
lized in the smart power grid. We focus on an end-user with renewable energy har-
vesting devices, when the market electricity price is time-varying. Two problems are
studied under this framework. First, we propose a scheme to minimize the energy
cost for which usage of electricity appliances are subject to their individual delay
constraints and a long-term average delay constraint. In the second problem, we
allow end-users to trade energy with the grid. Similar to the stock market, end-users
can buy and store energy from the grid when the electricity price is low and sell the
energy to the grid when the electricity price is high. We propose a scheme, which is
shown to be asymptotically optimal.
Our investigation in these application scenarios of renewable energy yields dif-
ferent algorithms with provable performance. These results show the significance of
exploiting new approaches to incorporate and manage renewable energy while main-
taining their high utilization.
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To my beloved parents, Mr. Gaojian Chen and Mrs. Xiaofeng Deng
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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
First and foremost, I would like to thank my two advisors, Prof. Ness B. Shroff
and Prof. Prasun Sinha. It is a great honor for me to get advised by them. They
taught me how to live, how to study, and how to think. I really appreciate all their
contributions of time, funding, and energy to inspire and guide me to identify and
solve problems. I am also thankful for the freedom they provided me in selecting and
formulating the research problems of my interest. Without doubt, what they have
endowed me throughout the years of my graduate study will have a significant impact
on the rest of my life.
I sincerely thank Prof. Atilla Eryilmaz, Prof Emre Koksal, Prof Vadim Utkin for
serving in my candidacy committee. Their insightful comments and suggestions have
helped me significantly in working on my research for my dissertation.
I would like to express my gratitude to my dear parents for their endless love and
support throughout my life. Their love and encouragement have been helping me
chasing my dreams.
I would like to thank all my friend I made through my years of study at the Ohio
State University. I would like to thank all the members in Prof. Shroff’s group and
Prof Sinha’s group - Srikanth, Bo, Zhoujia, Shuang, Wenzhuo, Swapna, Yang, Yousi,
Yin, Zizhan, Kevin, Yoora, Zhixue, Tarun, Dong, Wenjie. It is my great pleasure
to work together and conduct various discussions with you. I would also thank my
other dear friends - Zhongqiang, Qian, Xiaodong, Jingqiu, Zhe, Siwei, Fei, Shiyang,
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Lisi, Jing, Xiaofan etc. I cannot list all the names here, but your friendship makes
my life a wonderful experience.
Finally, I would like to thank Jeri, our group secretary, for her help and patience.
I also thank all staff in the ECE department for their support.
This thesis is a beginning of my new journey.
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VITA
Oct 22nd, 1986 ........................ Born in Ji’An Jiangxi, China
2002-2006 ............................. B.S.inElectronicsEngineering, Tsinghua
University
2006-2008 ............................. M.S.inElectronicsEngineering,Tsinghua
University
2008-Present .......................... PH.D. in Electrical and Computer Engi-
neering, The Ohio State University
PUBLICATIONS
Shengbo Chen, Prasun Sinha and Ness B. Shroff, “Heterogeneous Delay Tolerant
TaskSchedulingandEnergyManagementintheSmartGridwithRenewableEnergy,”
to appear in IEEE Journal on Selected Areas in Communications (JSAC).
Shengbo Chen, Prasun Sinha, Ness B. Shroff and Changhee Joo, “A Simple Asymp-
totically Optimal Joint Energy Allocation and Routing Scheme in Rechargeable Sen-
sor Networks,” under minor revision, IEEE/ACM Transactions on Networking.
Shengbo Chen, Prasun Sinha and Ness B. Shroff, “Energy Trading in the Smart
Grid: From End-user’s Perspective,” To appear in Asilomar Conference on Signals,
Systems and Computers, 2013. (Invited paper)
Shengbo Chen, Tarun Bansal, Yin Sun, Prasun Sinha and Ness B. Shroff, “Life-Add:
Lifetime Adjustable Design for WiFi Networks with Heterogeneous Energy Supplies,”
to appear in Proceeding of Wiopt, 2013.
Shengbo Chen, Prasun Sinha and Ness B. Shroff, “Scheduling Heterogeneous Delay
Tolerant Tasks in Smart Grid with Renewable Energy,” in Proceeding of IEEE CDC,
pp. 1130-1135, Dec, 2012.
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Shengbo Chen, Prasun Sinha, Ness B. Shroff and Changhee Joo, “A Simple Asymp-
totically Optimal Energy Allocation and Routing Scheme in Rechargeable Sensor
Networks,” in Proceeding of IEEE INFOCOM, pp. 379-387, Orlando, Mar, 2012.
Shengbo Chen, Prasun Sinha, Ness B. Shroff and Changhee Joo, “Finite-Horizon
Energy Allocation and Routing Scheme in Rechargeable Sensor Networks,” in Pro-
ceedings of IEEE INFOCOM, pp. 2273-2281, Shanghai, Apr, 2011.
FIELDS OF STUDY
Major Field: Electrical and Computer Engineering
Specialization: Networking
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TABLE OF CONTENTS
Abstract . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ii
Dedication . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . iii
Acknowledgments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . v
Vita . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . vii
List of Figures . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xiii
CHAPTER PAGE
1 INTRODUCTION . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
1.1 Wireless Sensor Networks . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2
1.1.1 Finite-horizon control . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
1.1.2 Infinite-horizon control . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
1.1.3 Research Impact . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
1.2 WiFi Networks . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
1.3 The Smart Power Grid . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
1.3.1 Task Scheduling . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
1.3.2 Energy Trading . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
1.3.3 Research Impact . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
1.4 Thesis Organization . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
2 Finite-Horizon Energy Allocation and Routing Scheme in Rechargeable
Sensor Networks . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
2.1 System Model . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14
2.2 Finite-horizon Optimal Energy Allocation Scheme for a Single Node 15
2.2.1 Problem Formulation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15
2.2.2 Definitions and Preliminary Results . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16
2.2.3 The Optimality of the Shortest-Path Solution . . . . . . . 19
2.2.4 Discussion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22
2.3 An Online Algorithm with Estimation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24
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