Energy-optimal scheduling with dynamic channel attainment in wireless downlinks

Channel acquisition is central to opportunistic scheduling for transmission over wireless channels. Practically it comes with probing power overhead. In low traffic regime, disregarding the channel and transmitting packets blindly may suffice to stabilize the network, and it wastes no probing power. Under the additional probing power cost assumption, we explore when is appropriate to probe the channel so that the network capacity can be achieved with minimum power consumption.