Cognitive Relay Networks With Energy Harvesting and Information Transfer: Design, Analysis, and Optimization

Abstract

In this paper, a wireless energy harvesting and information transfer protocol in cognitive relay networks is investigated, where an energy harvesting secondary network shares the spectrum as well as harvests energy by assisting the primary transmission. Specifically, a secondary transmitter scavenges energy from the received primary signal and then employs the harvested energy to forward the resulting signals along with the secondary signal. The secondary receiver can also harvest the ambient energy, and use the remaining signal to cancel the primary interference. We analytically derive the exact expressions of the outage probabilities for both primary and secondary networks. The rate-energy tradeoff between the ergodic capacity and harvested energy in the secondary network is also discussed. Furthermore, to quantify the energy consumption, we investigate the system energy efficiency. Moreover, we address the optimization power allocation strategy under three performance criteria and theoretically prove that the resulting nonconvex optimization problems can be converted into biconvex problems. The corresponding effective algorithms are then developed to solve the optimization problems. Numerical results show that the proposed protocol not only achieves both the primary and secondary transmissions but also harvests the ambient energy.