On the Performance of Interference-Based Energy-Harvesting-Enabled Wireless AF Relaying Communication Systems

This article considers an interference-based radio-frequency energy harvesting (RF-EH)-empowered wireless dual-hop amplify-and-forward relaying system in which an ambient interferer is beneficially utilized as the solely free power source for EH and detrimentally considered as the dominant factor that corrupts its receivers. Three EH modes are considered and analyzed separately. In mode I, energy is harvested only by the source; in mode II, energy is harvested only by the relay; and in mode III, energy is harvested concurrently by both the source and relay. Under these modes, exact and approximate analytical expressions are derived for the system's outage probability, which are directly used to determine the system's delay-limited throughput as a performance figure of merit. Thorough numerical and simulation results are presented to verify the analytical work and to demonstrate the system's throughput performance under different system and channel parameters. For example, results reveal that for given channel conditions, increasing the interferer's power reduces the throughput in case of modes I and II, and has no effect on it in case of mode III. Also, for given interferer's power, improving the channel conditions between the interferer and a harvesting node, improves the throughput, while improving them between the interferer and a receiving node, degrades the throughput.