Consumption Factor Optimization for Multihop Relaying Over Nakagami- $m$ Fading Channels

In this paper, the energy efficiency (EE) of multihop relaying over Nakagami-m fading channels is investigated. The “consumption factor” (CF), which is adopted as a metric to evaluate the EE, is derived for both amplify-and-forward and decode-and-forward relaying strategies. Then, based on the obtained expressions, we propose a power-allocation (PA) strategy maximizing the CF. In addition, a suboptimal low-complexity PA algorithm is proposed and analyzed, and the obtained PA scheme is compared in terms of EE with other PA schemes from the literature. Analytical and simulation results confirm the accuracy of our derivations and assess the performance gains of the proposed approach.