Energy Harvesting in Multi-relay Multiuser Networks based on Two-step Selection Scheme

Abstract

In this paper, we analyze average capacity of an amplify-and-forward (AF) cooperative communication system model in multi-relay multiuser networks. In contrast to conventional cooperative networks, relays in the considered network have no embedded energy supply. They need to rely on the energy harvested from the signals broadcasted by the source for their cooperative information transmission. Based on this structure, a two-step selection scheme is proposed considering both channel state information (CSI) and battery status of relays. Assuming each relay has infinite or finite energy storage for accumulating the energy, we use the infinite or finite Markov chain to capture the evolution of relay batteries and certain simplified assumptions to reduce computational complexity of the Markov chain analysis. The approximate closed-form expressions for the average capacity of the proposed scheme are derived. All theoretical results are validated by numerical simulations. The impacts of the system parameters, such as relay or user number, energy harvesting threshold and battery size, on the capacity performance are extensively investigated. Results show that although the performance of our scheme is inferior to the optimal joint selection scheme, it is still a practical scheme because its complexity is much lower than that of the optimal scheme.