Outage Performance of Two-hop Networks with Multiple SWIPT Relays under Nonlinear EH Model

Simultaneous wireless information and power transfer (SWIPT) has wide application in Internet of Things and wireless sensor networks. However, most existing works adopted the ideal linear energy harvesting model and perfect channel state assumption to analyze the system performance, which mismatches the nonlinear feature of practical circuits and neglects the channel estimation error. Therefore, this paper studies the outage performance of two-hop networks with multiple SWIPT relays under nonlinear EH model with imperfect channel state consideration. Decode-and-forward relaying protocols and time switching (TS) SWIPT receiver architecture are employed. The closed-form expression of the outage performance is derived over Rayleigh fading. Mont Carlo simulation results are provided to verify the correctness of the derived analytical model. It also shows that by increasing the number of relays, system outage probability could be effectively reduced and the smaller the selected number of relays, the smaller the system outage probability.