Mean power consumption of artificial power capture in wireless networks

In wireless networks, portable terminals are usually powered by battery, and they communicate through the free-space spectrum. Therefore, both the transmission power and bandwidth are scarce resources. Artificial power capture is a simple and effective method to exploit the transmission bandwidth to give a higher throughput, but it may consume a larger mean transmission power because some packets are transmitted at higher power. In this paper, we analyze the mean power consumption of artificial power capture, and formulate two capture control problems which regulate the mean power consumption and the throughput. The analysis reveals that, although some packets are transmitted at higher power, artificial power capture has a smaller mean power consumption than the case without capture when the traffic is sufficiently heavy. This is because artificial power capture can significantly increase the probability of successful transmission at heavy traffic, and hence the mean power consumed for successfully transmitting a packet is smaller.