Energy-assisted decode-and-forward for energy harvesting cooperative cognitive networks

In this paper, we consider a simultaneous wireless information and power transfer (SWIPT)-enabled cooperative cognitive network that addresses energy scarcity and spectral scarcity, two important issues in 5G wireless communications. In the considered network, the self-sustainable, SWIPT-enabled relay assists primary user's transmission, while the relay itself is also a secondary user with its own information superimposed on the regenerated primary information for transmission. The SWIPT relay employs the proposed energy-assisted decode-and-forward (EDF) protocol, which enhances the conventional decode-and-forward (DF) protocol with energy-dimension-augmented information decoding. We conduct a comparative analysis of the proposed EDF and the conventional DF and amplify-and-forward (AF) protocols in this SWIPT cooperative cognitive framework in terms of capacity, outage probability, and throughput for both primary and secondary networks. Simulation corroborates the analysis and demonstrates performance advantages of EDF over DF/AF from various perspectives.