Performance evaluation of multiuser Internet of Things wireless-powered relaying networks with transceiver hardware imperfections over Nakagami-m fading channels

We investigate the performance of multiuser Internet of Things (IoT) relay networks in the presence of transceiver hardware impairments. In particular, K$$ K $$ IoT users communicate with a destination via a simultaneous wireless information and power transfer (SWIPT) amplify-and-forward relay. We exploit both time-switching (TS) and power-splitting (PS) protocols at the SWIPT-aided relay terminal. Specifically, we derive the exact outage probability (OP) expressions for both TS and PS schemes under transceiver hardware imperfections over Nakagami-m fading channels. In addition, we derive the asymptotic OP expressions for both TS and PS schemes in the high signal-to-noise ratio regime. From which, the diversity order of KmSR$$ K{m}_{SR} $$ can be achieved, where mSR$$ {m}_{SR} $$ denotes the fading severity parameter for the channel between K$$ K $$ IoT users and relay. Furthermore, we present a tight upper bound for the ergodic capacity (EC) under both TS and PS schemes with transceiver hardware impairments over Nakagami-m fading channels. Moreover, our results demonstrate the impact of number of IoT users, fading severity parameters, TS factor, PS factor, and energy conversion efficiency, on the system performance. We also validate our analytical findings via numerical and simulation results.