Active Status Update Packet Drop Control in an Energy Harvesting Node

This paper considers an energy harvesting sensor node with battery size B_max that recharges its battery through an incremental energy harvesting process and receives updates from a single information source in slotted time. The node actively decides to power down (OFF) or up (ON) the communication circuitry for a portion of its operation time in order to maintain energy efficiency. Update packets arriving in ON (OFF) periods are received (discarded). A deterministic energy cost per time is paid during ON periods. The power down decision can be in partial or full nature, yielding various options for deciding ON-OFF intervals. We develop age-threshold based power ON-OFF schemes to minimize age of information at the node subject to energy harvesting constraints with partial and full power down options for B_max=1 and B_max=infinity cases.