Throughput in an Energy Harvesting Wireless Uplink

In this paper, throughput maximization in a wireless energy harvesting uplink is considered. For fairness, we assume that each node's throughput cannot drop below what it achieves by direct transmission to the base station. The throughput is maximized using data relaying and by optimally assigning a role to each node, i.e., relay, source (direct transmission), or user (of a relay). Both centralized and decentralized algorithms that find the optimal assignment of each node are proposed and studied. We consider fixed and variable transmit power scenarios and address complexity issues. Our algorithms are shown to have a linear or quadratic complexity compared with the exponential complexity of the brute force approach. Compared with cooperative transmission, our approach maximizes the overall throughput of the network such that no node's throughput is adversely affected.