Harvest-and-Opportunistically-Relay: Analyses on Transmission Outage and Covertness

To enhance transmission performance, privacy level, and energy manipulating efficiency of wireless networks, this article initiates a novel simultaneous wireless information and power transfer (SWIPT) full-duplex (FD) relaying protocol, named harvest-and-opportunistically-relay (HOR). Due to the FD characteristics, the dynamic fluctuation of relay’s residual energy is difficult to quantify and track. To solve this problem, the Markov Chain (MC) theory is invoked. Furthermore, to improve the privacy level of the proposed HOR relaying system, covert transmission performance analysis is performed, where closed-form expressions of the optimal detection threshold and minimum detection error probability are derived. Last but not least, with the aid of stationary distribution of the MC, closed-form expression of transmission outage probability is calculated, based on which transmission outage performance is analyzed. Numerical results have validated the correctness of analyses on transmission outage and covertness. The impacts of key system parameters on the performance of transmission outage and covertness are given and discussed. Based on mathematical analysis and numerical results, we showcase that the proposed HOR model can not only reliably enhance the transmission performance via smartly managing residual energy but also efficiently improve the privacy level of the legitimate transmission party via dynamically adjusting the optimal detection threshold.