Multi-Hop Relaying Using Energy Harvesting

In this letter, the performance of multi-hop relaying using energy harvesting is evaluated. Both amplify-and-forward and decode-and-forward relaying protocols are considered. The evaluation is conducted for time-switching energy harvesting as well as power-splitting energy harvesting. The largest number of hops given an initial amount of energy from the source node is calculated. Numerical results show that, in order to extend the network coverage using multi-hop relaying, time-switching is a better option than power splitting and in some cases, decode-and-forward also supports more hops than amplify-and-forward.