Delay Tolerant Cooperation in the Energy Harvesting Multiple Access Channel

We consider the optimum transmit scheduling problem for a two user energy harvesting cooperative multiple access channel. We assume a slotted model where energy harvests in each slot are known a priori. We propose a delay tolerant cooperation model: the transmitters create common information in a given slot, but need not cooperatively send the created common information immediately; they may relegate all or part of the cooperative message transmission to upcoming slots. We propose a modified block Markov superposition coding scheme based on message re-partitioning, that spans multiple slots. We characterize the corresponding achievable departure region by a deadline, and maximize it subject to energy harvesting constraints. We show that, delay tolerant cooperation need not necessarily improve the departure region over delay constrained cooperation, and derive a sufficient condition for the equivalence of the two policies. We compare optimal delay constrained and delay tolerant cooperation policies, and their achievable departure regions via simulations.