Optimum transmission policies for two hop transmission assisted by renewable energy powered amplify-and-forward relay

Abstract

Our aim is to maximize throughput of a transmitter–receiver pair assisted by amplify-and-forward relay. We consider a case in which the relay is powered solely by a renewable energy source, and the transmitter has average power constraint. The receiver employs optimal combining. Instantaneous CSI is assumed to be available. Our aim is to design a throughput optimal joint power control at the transmitter and the relay. Power control must account for the battery level at the relay in addition to the CSI. In our main contribution, we propose an alternate maximization based approach for throughput maximization. This is the first work that addresses joint power control in solely renewable energy powered AF relay assisted communication with optimal signal combining at the receiver. We evaluate the proposed policy using numerical studies and Monte Carlo simulations.