Optimal transmission scheduling over a fading channel with energy and deadline constraints

We seek to maximize the average data throughput of a single transmitter sending data over a fading channel to a single user class. The transmitter has a fixed amount of energy and a limited amount of time to send data. Given that the channel state determines the throughput obtained per unit of energy expended, the goal is to obtain a policy for scheduling transmissions that maximizes the expected data throughput. We develop a dynamic programming formulation that leads to an optimal transmission schedule, first where the present channel state is known just before transmission, and then to the case where the current channel state is unknown before transmission, but observed after transmission and evolves according to a Markov process. We then extend our approach to the problem of minimizing the expected energy required to send a fixed amount of data over a fading channel given deadline constraints.