Analysis of discrete-time energy-harvesting DF relay in Rician fading channel

We use idle nodes to achieve performance gains in Cooperative communications. Energy harvesting can allow cooperative communication being less dependent on batteries. In this paper, the performance of energy harvesting (EH) decode-and-forward (DF) relaying is analyzed in Ricican fading channels, in contrast to previous works that just focused on Rayleigh fading channels. Discrete time EH-IT protocol for DF relay is considered. Analytical expression for the average throughput is derived. Numerical results are presented to show the better performance of the system in Rician fading channels by examining the throughput or optimal throughput with various system parameters.