ERGODIC CAPACITY PERFORMANCE ANALYSIS OF ENERGY-HARVESTING RELAY NETWORKS

In this paper, we study a wireless sensor relay network model, where the relay is powered by the source node, and the harvested energy is used for information transmission. We propose a new two-phase protocol for amplify-and-forward system, where the relay uses the energy harvested in the first phase to amplify and retransmit the signal to the destination in the second phase. As a more practical consideration, we include the direct transmission from the source node to the destination node in our network architecture. We adopt the ergodic capacity to measure the performance of the network and provide an upper bound, which is quite tight in the high signal to noise ratio (SNR) region. Finally, we explore the effects of power-splitting parameters on the performance of the ergodic capacity. Extensive simulations are performed to validate the theoretical results.