Buffer-Aided Relaying Improves Throughput of Full-Duplex Relay Networks With Fixed-Rate Transmissions

Abstract

The concept of buffer-aided relaying has recently emerged as a viable solution for improving the performance of wireless networks with half-duplex relays. In this letter, we show that buffer-aided relaying is also beneficial to wireless networks with ideal full-duplex (FD) relays. To this end, we investigate the two-hop FD relay network, which is comprised of a source, an FD relay equipped with a buffer, and a destination where a direct source–destination link does not exist. For this network, we assume that the source and the relay select their transmission rates from discrete sets of available transmission rates, and propose a corresponding buffer-aided relaying scheme, which maximizes the throughput. Our numerical results show that the proposed buffer-aided relaying scheme provides the significant throughput gains compared with conventional FD relaying schemes, which do not employ buffers at the relays.