Joint Power Allocation in Classified WBANs With Wireless Information and Power Transfer

In this article, a classified system with a relay is investigated in wireless body area networks (WBANs), where some on-body sensors are divided into several sensor groups on the basis of different body parts. Not only can the network detect basic vital signs but also the physiological signals of special diseases. All groups of sensors and the relay harvest energy by the radio-frequency (RF) source broadcasting, then the same group of sensors simultaneously sends common information through cooperation to the source. Since the classified system is a confined system, we maximize the system throughput with a joint power allocation on maximum ratio combining (JPA-MRC) protocol, where the transmission power allocation at the relay is unequal for each relaying subslot. The optimal problem is solved by the Lagrange multiplier method and the Karush–Kuhn–Tucker (KKT) optimal conditions. To further the obtain optimal solution, we simplify co-optimization of relay power and sensor power to the optimization of single power by the equivalent channel gains. Analytical and simulation results show that our proposed optimal method can greatly improve the information throughput compared to the conventional mean power allocation method. In addition, the protocol based on the classified scheme outperforms than that of the conventional unclassified scheme. The impacts of various important system parameters are analyzed, which provide useful design insights under different cases.