Optimal Energy Allocation Policies for a High Altitude Flying Wireless\n Access Point

Abstract

Inspired by recent industrial efforts toward high altitude flying wireless\naccess points powered by renewable energy, an online resource allocation\nproblem for a mobile access point (AP) travelling at high altitude is\nformulated. The AP allocates its resources (available energy) to maximize the\ntotal utility (reward) provided to a sequentially observed set of users\ndemanding service. The problem is formulated as a 0/1 dynamic knapsack problem\nwith incremental capacity over a finite time horizon, the solution of which is\nquite open in the literature. We address the problem through deterministic and\nstochastic formulations. For the deterministic problem, several online\napproximations are proposed based on an instantaneous threshold that can adapt\nto short-time-scale dynamics. For the stochastic model, after showing the\noptimality of a threshold based solution on a dynamic programming (DP)\nformulation, an approximate threshold based policy is obtained. The\nperformances of proposed policies are compared with that of the optimal\nsolution obtained through DP.\n