Duplexing and synchronism for energy efficient source cooperation communications

We address the energy efficiency analysis for the two-sources cooperative multi-access channel and investigate the impact of usual practical constraints. Specifically, we take into account constraints on the transmission/reception duplexing and on the synchronization between sources. Assuming a total network energy, we define and compute the maximum rate-per-energy region (RPE) with decode-and-forward relaying and joint coding of own and relayed data. It is shown that while synchronism provides gains on the maximum RPE region, duplexity does not. To see the gain by duplexing, the slope region of the spectral efficiency is also derived.