Decode-and-forward two-path successive relaying with wireless energy harvesting

We consider an energy harvesting (EH) based cooperative relaying network, where two half-duplex relays can alternatively forward source data to the destination. The power-splitting technique is implemented at each relay. That is, part of the received source signal and inter-relay interference is allocated for the EH, while the remaining part is used for the information decoding (ID). The inter-relay interference is harmful for the ID, but it is beneficial for the EH. The transmit powers of the two relays are properly set by letting the average energy consumption equal the average amount of EH. The optimal power splitting ratio between EH and ID is numerically determined to maximize the system throughput. Numerical results show that our proposed two-path successive relaying scheme can greatly outperform the single-relay system in terms of average throughput by enabling much higher energy and spectral efficiency.