Performance analysis of DSSC based RF energy harvesting using 2RRS scheme

Abstract

The use of radio frequency (RF) for energy harvesting (EH) in wireless networks has grown in popularity in recent years. RF can be used for powering energy-constrained network nodes as well as to perform data transmission. One of the many flaws that hinder signal transmission in wireless networks is fading. Cooperative communication could be used to lessen the effects of channel fading. By use of relaying technique in cooperative communication, data is transmitted from the source to the destination in smaller hops. This enhances the transmission reliability as well as the radio coverage of the wireless network. A dual hop relay-aided network with wireless energy harvesting is taken into consideration in this thesis. The relays harvest RF energy from the source in order to use it for data transmission. The best relay is chosen for communication assistance within a set transmission block time. Relay selection procedures are crucial to choose the relay that will provide the best network performance at the output. Moreover, an optimization technique is required to handle the trade-off between the energy collected and the received signal quality in a wireless energy harvesting network. In order to address this problem, a comparison of the network performance is done between the existing Partial Relay Selection (PRS) strategy with the proposed Two Round Relay Selection (2RRS)—by utilising Distributed Switch and Stay Combining (DSSC) combining technique at the receiver. The above model with three cooperative relays is simulated using the MATLAB 2015a software. The simulations are done for the two relaying protocols - Amplify and Forward (AF) and Decode and Forward (DF) respectively. The performance of the existing and the proposed relay selection network in terms of outage probability, throughput and spectral efficiency is analysed using the results from the simulations.