Performance of a Cooperative Network with Energy Harvesting Source and Relay

In this paper, we analyze the performance of a two-hop cooperative communication network in which both source and the relay are energy buffer-aided energy harvesting nodes. We consider fixed-rate signalling at both the nodes. The source and relay are assumed to harvest energy from ambient sources and store it in energy buffers. In this paper we use discrete-time continuous-state space Markov chain to model the energy stored in the buffers. We consider two different energy management policies at the source - best-effort policy (BEP) and on-off policy (OOP) while only OOP is considered at the relay. Using these policies, two different cooperative transmission schemes are pre- sented. We also compare performance with direct transmission schemes. Simulation results are presented to validate the derived analytical expressions and bring out useful insights.