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 ONOFF 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
= TO cases.