A new energy harvesting scheme for multi-relay cooperative networks

Abstract

Wireless networks have gone through unprecedented changes in the last decade owing to the rise in the number of users. Radio frequency (RF) energy harvesting (EH) (termed as RF-EH) can be a potential solution to encounter the energy constraints in the next generation wireless devices. In this study, we have proposed a new RF-EH technique from an RF source which was, to the best of our knowledge, not considered useful in any previous works. We have investigated the performance of an RF-EH cooperative multi-relay network by benefiting from the transmitted signal of the best relay (Rb) to the destination. In the most common RF-EH cooperative multiple relaying networks, only the relays harvest energy from the signal of source to power up themselves. However, in the proposed RF-EH technique, both the signals of source and Rb are exploited to harvest energy. In the proposed scheme, each of the relays harvests energy from the transmitted signal by source during phase-1, whereas the relays other than the Rb also harvest energy from the transmitted signal of Rb to destination during phase-2. Additionally, we have investigated our proposed scheme for both time-switching and power-splitting receiver architectures. Finally, from the simulation results, an increase in the system throughput and better outage performance is observed in the proposed scheme as compared to the conventional EH protocol in which EH is performed merely from the signal of source.