Dilemma at RF Energy Harvesting Relay: Downlink Energy Relaying or Uplink Information Transfer?

The performance of RF powered communication networks is bottlenecked by the short downlink energy transfer range and the doubly near-far problem faced in uplink information transfer to hybrid access point (HAP). These problems can be resolved by cooperation of an RF energy harvesting node R present between HAP and RF energy harvesting information source S. However, there lies a dilemma at R on whether to transfer its harvested energy to S or to act as an information relay for transferring its data to HAP in a two-hop fashion. This paper resolves this dilemma at R by providing insights into its optimal positions suited for either energy relaying (ER) or information relaying (IR). It also investigates the possibilities of integrated ER and IR along with the regions where neither ER nor IR will be useful. In this regard, while considering Rician fading channels and practical nonlinear RF energy harvesting model, the expression for mean harvested dc power at S via energy transfer from HAP and ER from R is first derived. The closed-form outage probability expression is also derived for decode-and- forward relaying with maximal-ratio-combining at HAP over Rician channels. Using these expressions, insights into optimal relaying mode is obtained along with global-optimal utilization of harvested energy at R for ER and IR to maximize the delaylimited RF-powered throughput. Numerical results validate the analysis and provide insights into the optimal relaying mode.