Relay selection and nonlinear energy harvesting in full-duplex multi-relay cooperative network

Energy harvesting (EH) is a promising technique to extend the lifetime energy-constrained devices in wireless networks. This paper analyses the significance of relay selection and non-linear EH in evaluating the performance of Full-duplex (FD) decode-and-forward (DF) multi-relay cooperative network. The relay selection is considered under three scenarios based on channel state information (CSI) availability. We compare the EH performance of a hybrid power-time-splitting (PTS)-based non-linear energy harvester with time-spitting (TS) and power-splitting (PS) EH at the relay node. We derive the expression of outage probability (OP) of FD DF multi-relay cooperative network over independent and identically distributed Rayleigh fading channels. Numerical results show that the outage performance of the system is significantly enhanced by deploying an ideal relay selection scheme. This paper also gives insights about the combined effect of saturation threshold of non-linear EH and residual self-interference (RSI) on the system performance. Unlike linear EH systems, the non-linear EH causes the outage floor even when the RSI is significantly small. The response of the system is also analysed for the impact of TS and PS ratios. Furthermore, we also investigate the system’s performance in terms of other system parameters like the number of relays and data transfer rate. Monte Carlo simulations are used to verify the analytical expressions.