Robust smart-grid-powered cooperative multipoint systems

A framework is introduced to integrate renewable energy sources (RES) and dynamic pricing capabilities of the smart grid into beamforming designs for coordinated multipoint (CoMP) downlink communication systems. To this end, novel models are put forth to account for harvesting, storage of nondispatchable RES, time-varying energy pricing, and stochastic wireless channels. Building on these models, robust energy management and transmit-beamforming designs are developed to minimize the worst-case energy cost subject to the worst-case user QoS guarantees for the CoMP downlink. Leveraging pertinent tools, this task is formulated as a convex problem. A Lagrange dual-based subgradient iteration is then employed to find the desired optimal energy-management strategy and transmit-beamforming vectors. Numerical results are provided to demonstrate the merits of the proposed robust designs.