Distributed Relay Selection Protocols for Simultaneous Wireless Information and Power Transfer

摘要

Harvesting energy from the radio-frequency (RF) signal is an excitingsolution to replenish energy in energy-constrained wireless networks. In thispaper, an amplify-and-forward (AF) based wireless relay network is considered,where the relay nodes need to harvest energy from the source's RF signal toforward information to the destination. To improve the performance ofinformation transmission, we propose two distributed relay selection protocols,Maximum Harvested Energy (MHE) protocol and Maximum Signal-to-Noise Ratio(MSNR) protocol. Then, we derive the outage probabilities of the system withour proposed relay selection protocols and prove that the proposed selectionprotocols indeed can improve the system performances and the MSNR protocoloutperforms the MHE protocol. Simulation results verify the analysis andtheorems. In addition, the effects of key system parameters are alsoinvestigated via simulations.