Impact of channel state information on wireless energy harvesting cooperative networks with spatially random relays

Energy harvesting has been recognized as a key technique for improving the performance of energy constrained networks. In this paper, the application of wireless information and power transfer, an emerging concept of energy harvesting, to wireless cooperative networks is considered. Particularly the focus is on a cooperative network in which a source communicates with a destination with the help of relays and the relays are randomly deployed according to homogeneous Poisson point process. According to the available channel state information, three different strategies to use the available relays are studied, and their impact on the outage probability and diversity gain is characterized by applying stochastic geometry. Particularly the developed analytical results demonstrate that the use of energy harvesting relays does not degrade the achievable diversity gain of cooperative protocols, but has a deteriorating effect on the outage performance. Simulation results are provided to confirm the accuracy of the developed analytical results and facilitate a better performance comparison.