Analysis of cooperative systems with wireless power transfer and randomly located relays

We consider a cooperative communication system where source and destination exchange messages with the help of relays. We investigate a scenario where the relays are not equipped with fixed batteries but collect the required energy (for processing and transmission purposes) via simultaneous wireless information and power transfer (SWIPT). We assume the relays are randomly distributed in the scenario and investigate the performance of such cooperative system for two different choices of the relay. Our analytical model holds for a large class of propagation and fading models. The results show that, when the propagation conditions are not particularly severe, the relay assistance can improve significantly system performance compared to the direct source-destination link.