RF Energy Harvesting Enabled Power Sharing in Relay Networks

TL;DR

This paper investigates RF energy harvesting in relay networks, proposing an optimal power allocation strategy to enhance throughput while ensuring energy constraints are met, enabling energy sharing among wireless devices.

Contribution

It introduces a novel optimal power allocation policy for RF energy harvesting in relay networks, with closed-form solutions considering channel and efficiency variations.

Findings

Optimal joint source and relay power allocation derived

Closed-form solutions for different channel conditions

Enhanced throughput under energy constraints

Abstract

Through simultaneous energy and information transfer, radio frequency (RF) energy harvesting (EH) reduces the energy consumption of the wireless networks. It also provides a new approach for the wireless devices to share each other's energy storage, without relying on the power grid or traffic offloading. In this paper, we study RF energy harvesting enabled power balancing within the decode-and-forward (DF) relaying-enhanced cooperative wireless system. An optimal power allocation policy is proposed for the scenario where both source and relay nodes can draw power from the radio frequency signals transmitted by each other. To maximize the overall throughput while meeting the energy constraints imposed by the RF sources, an optimization problem is formulated and solved. Based on different harvesting efficiency and channel condition, closed form solutions for optimal joint source and relay power allocation are derived.