Authors: Mahmoud Hadef, Apostolos Apostolaras, Jim O’Reilly, Alain Mourad, Belkacem Mouhouche, Iordanis Koutsopoulos, Thanasis Korakis and Leandros Tassiulas

Conference: WCNC, Instanbul, Turkey, 6 - 9 April 2014

In this paper we evaluate an energy aware relay selection mechanism which exploits channel state information and the availability of buffers at relays to perform flexible relaying based on a back-pressure driven optimization model. This model ensured maximization of the cell throughput while maintaining the stability of backlog queues. Performance evaluation is conducted using a System Level Simulator which is fully compliant with IEEE 802.16m and supports various relaying scenarios. The Below Roof Top (BRT) relaying scenario is considered in this work. A holistic and flexible energy framework is implemented to capture the energy consumption of the cellular network nodes. The model maps the RF output power radiated at the antenna elements of each node including relays on the network to the total supply power of the node equipment. Two derivatives of the proposed mechanisms, half duplex and full duplex are proposed and evaluated. Results of the two derivatives on BRT relaying scenario revealed noticeable increases for both cell throughput and system energy efficiency of the cell-edge users compared to conventional relaying protocols and non cooperative scheme.

Keywords – relay, two hop network, energy efficiency, energy aware, relay selection, buffer-aided, throughput, WiMAX and LTE.

Download paper: bare_conf_wcnc_v4.pdf