Generalized diversity combining of energy harvesting multiple antenna relay networks: outage and throughput performance analysis

In this paper, the generalized diversity combining of an energy constrained multiple antenna decode-and-forward relay network is considered. Using power splitting and time switching architectures in consort with diversity combining at the relay, six protocols are proposed, i.e., power splitting with selection combining (PSSC), power splitting with maximum ratio combining (PSMRC), power splitting with generalized selection combining (PSGSC), time switching with selection combining (TSSC), time switching with maximum ratio combining (TSMRC), and time switching with generalized selection combining (TSGSC). The outage probability and throughput performance of each protocol is analyzed by first developing the closed form analytical expressions and then verifying these through the Monte Carlo simulation method. Simulation results show that system performance improves both with increasing the number of antennas and decreasing the distance between the source and relay. The TSSC/TSMRC/TSGSC protocols yield better outage performance whereas the PSSC/PSMRC/PSGSC protocols achieve relatively higher throughput performance. Finally, the effects of power splitting ratio, energy harvesting time ratio, energy conversion efficiency, sample down conversion noise, and the target signal-to-noise ratio on system performance are analyzed and presented.