Throughput Analysis of a Slotted Aloha-based Network with Energy Harvesting Nodes

In this paper, we evaluate the effect of energy constraints on the performance of a simple network comprised of wireless nodes with energy harvesting capability. In this scenario, wireless nodes contend with each other based on slotted Aloha protocol in order to transmit a packet. Packet transmission occurs provided that enough energy exists in the energy buffer. We propose an analytical model based on a closed queueing network (QN) to include details of data and energy buffers as well as random access MAC protocol. We show how energy limitation affects the MAC design parameters, e.g., contention window size, in order to optimize the performance of the network. Moreover, we evaluate the effect of energy constraints on maximum stable throughput, stability region, and packet drop rate. We also validate our analytical model by simulation.