Energy efficiency in energy harvesting cooperative networks with self-energy recycling

Cooperative communication has been identified as an important component in the 5G system. This paper considers a decode-and-forward (DF) relaying wireless cooperative network, in which the self-energy recycling relay is powered by radio-frequency (RF) signal from the source and its transmitted power from the loop-back channel. The harvested energy is used to support the relay transmissions. Based on a self-energy recycling relaying protocol, we study the optimization of energy efficiency in wireless cooperative networks. Although the formulated optimization problem is not convex, it can be re-constructed to a parametric problem in the convex form by using the non-linear fractional programming, to which closed form solutions can be found by using the Lagrange multiplier method. The simulation results are presented to verify the effectiveness of this solution proposed in this paper.