Modeling sensor networks with ON-OFF energy harvesting using Energy Packets

We present a model of a sensor networks with energy harvesting. We assume that the network is associated with solar panels or wind turbines. Therefore the energy harvesting is random and is strongly correlated to the day and night succession (for solar panels) or the strength of the wind (for turbines). We generalize the model of Energy Packet Networks (EPNs), recently introduced by Gelenbe to accommodate a ON-OFF arrival process for energy packets. We assume that during the night period, when the networks do not receive energy, the evolution of the network is stopped. We prove that such a network has a product form distribution for its a steady-state distribution of number of packets (under some technical assumptions) leading to the performance analysis for such systems.