Energy provision minimization of energy-harvesting cognitive radio networks with minimal throughput demands

The newly emerging energy-harvesting cognitive radio networks (EH-CRNs) have drawn significant research interests in the fields of spectrum reuse and lifetime prolongation. This paper focuses on the EH-CRN with a pair of primary users (PUs) and multiple pairs of secondary users (SUs), and aims to minimize the primary transmitter (PT)’s energy provision (EP) while satisfying the network’s or users’ minimal throughput demands. Specifically, under the network’s minimal throughput demand, we first formulate the EP minimization (EPM) problems as non-linear optimization problems, then transform them into convex problems, and finally propose an algorithm that jointly uses the golden-section search and bisection search method to obtain the optimal time allocation of PT’s energy transfer and each SU’s packet transmission. Under the users’ minimal throughput demands, we jointly use the golden-section search, bisection search methods, and the dual sub-gradient algorithm to derive the optimal time allocation of PUs and SUs. Simulation results demonstrate the effectiveness of our algorithms from the perspective of reducing EP.