Outage Performance in Cooperative IoT Networks with Energy Harvesting

In this paper, we consider a wireless-powered cooperative communication network (WPCCN) consisting of one access point (A), one Power Beacon (B), one source and one relay. In contrast to conventional cooperative networks, the source and relay in the considered network have no embedded energy supply. They need to rely on the energy harvested from B for their cooperative information transmission. We adopt a harvest-then-cooperate protocol in an urban environment, where the source and relay harvest energy from the signals broadcasted by B in the downlink and work cooperatively in the uplink for the sources information transmission. Non-orthogonal multiple access (NOMA) technique is applied in the extension for two-user scenario. Outage probability is explored in low and high signal to noise ratio (SNR) regimes. The impact of the distance between the nodes are extensively investigated.