Relaying Protocols and Delay Analysis for Buffer-aided Wireless Powered Cooperative Communication Networks

In this paper, we investigate a buffer-aided wireless powered cooperative communication network (WPCCN), in which the source and relay harvest the energy from a dedicated power beacon via wireless energy transfer, then the source transmits the data to the destination through the relay. Both the source and relay are equipped with an energy buffer to store the harvested energy in the energy transfer stage. In addition, the relay is equipped with a data buffer and can temporarily store the received information. Considering the buffer-aided WPCCN, we propose two buffer-aided relaying protocols, which named as the buffer-aided harvest-then-transmit (HtT) protocol and the buffer-aided joint mode selection and power allocation (JMSPA) protocol, respectively. For the buffer-aided HtT protocol, the time-averaged achievable rate is obtained in closed form. For the buffer-aided JMSPA protocol, the optimal adaptive mode selection scheme and power allocation scheme, which jointly maximize the time-averaged throughput of system, are obtained by employing the Lyapunov optimization theory. Furthermore, we drive the theoretical bounds on the time-averaged achievable rate and time-averaged delay, then present the throughput-delay tradeoff achieved by the joint JMSPA protocol. Simulation results validate the throughput performance gain of the proposed buffer-aided relaying protocols and verify the theoretical analysis.