Energy consumption and optimal relay node placement for cooperative retransmissions

Previous work on cooperative MAC design has shown significant performance improvement in terms of throughput and packet delivery ratio. However, little attention has been paid to extra energy cost at the relay node in order to achieve such benefit. In this paper, we focus on analyzing energy consumption at a relay node in cooperative retransmission networks with mixed Rayleigh and Rician fading channels. Furthermore, optimal relay location is studied with respect to energy efficiency in different scenarios. The simulation and calculation results coincide with each other, both showing the optimal location of the relay node is scenario-dependent and can be obtained under given channel conditions.