Relay selection for average throughput maximization in buffer-aided relay networks

In this paper, the relay selection issue in buffer-aided relay networks is studied. Different from traditional relay networks, buffer occupancy state has great effects on system performance. Keeping buffers always close to full or empty may lead to potential buffer overflow or data unavailability, which will ultimately affect system throughput and transmission delay jitter. In order to avoid this negative situation, we propose a new threshold-based selection strategy which can achieve the transmission capacity balance between input and output links of every relay buffer. Simulation results show that the proposed strategy can effectively prevent buffers from becoming always close to full or empty and, thus, result in great performance improvement compared to the counterpart.