Achievable throughput in relay-powered RF harvesting cooperative sensor networks

Aiming at uninterrupted sensor network, we consider a radio frequency (RF) harvesting cooperative communication scenario, where the field nodes (information sources) are powered by RF energy transfer (RFET) from a relay. The relay node can be either connected to the power grid or positioned at some ambient energy harvesting favorable location for the desired energy supply. To further reduce the field nodes' energy consumption, the relay node decodes-and-forwards the field data to the information sink in a two-hop half-duplex fashion. In the relay-powered cooperative network (RPCN), we derive closed form expressions of the ergodic capacity and achievable throughput for each source-destination pair. Achievable sum-throughput as a function of different system parameters, e.g., RFET time, RF-to-DC conversion efficiency, relay location, channel conditions, and relay transmit power is numerically evaluated. Significant throughput performance improvement in RPCN over conventional RF-powered communication networks is observed.