  We consider a binary energy harvesting communication channel with a
finite-sized battery at the transmitter. In this model, the channel input is
constrained by the available energy at each channel use, which is driven by an
external energy harvesting process, the size of the battery, and the previous
channel inputs. We consider an abstraction where energy is harvested in binary
units and stored in a battery with the capacity of a single unit, and the
channel inputs are binary. Viewing the available energy in the battery as a
state, this is a state-dependent channel with input-dependent states, memory in
the states, and causal state information available at the transmitter only. We
find an equivalent representation for this channel based on the timings of the
symbols, and determine the capacity of the resulting equivalent timing channel
via an auxiliary random variable. We give achievable rates based on certain
selections of this auxiliary random variable which resemble lattice coding for
the timing channel. We develop upper bounds for the capacity by using a
genie-aided method, and also by quantifying the leakage of the state
information to the receiver. We show that the proposed achievable rates are
asymptotically capacity achieving for small energy harvesting rates. We extend
the results to the case of ternary channel inputs. Our achievable rates give
the capacity of the binary channel within 0.03 bits/channel use, the ternary
channel within 0.05 bits/channel use, and outperform basic Shannon strategies
that only consider instantaneous battery states, for all parameter values.
