Joint Optimization Schemes for Cooperative Wireless Information and Power Transfer over Rician Channels

Simultaneous wireless information and power transfer (SWIPT) can lead to uninterrupted network operation by integrating radio frequency (RF) energy harvesting with data communication. In this paper, we consider a two-hop source-relay-destination network and investigate the efficient usage of a decode-and-forward (DF) relay for SWIPT toward the energy-constrained destination. In particular, by assuming a Rician fading environment, we jointly optimize power allocation (PA), relay placement (RP), and power splitting (PS) so as to minimize outage probability under the harvested power constraint at the destination node. We consider the two possible cases of source-to-destination distance: (1) small distance with direct information transfer link; and (2) relatively large distance with no direct reachability. Analytical expressions for individual and joint optimal PA, RP, and PS are obtained by exploiting convexity of outage minimization problem for the no direct link case. In case of direct source-to-destination link, multipseudoconvexity of joint-optimal PA, RP, and PS problem is proved, and alternating optimization is used to find the global optimal solution. Numerical results show that the joint optimal solutions, although strongly influenced by the harvested power requirement at the destination, can provide respectively 64% and 100% outage improvement over the fixed allocation scheme for without and with direct link.