Abstract

Abstract—In this letter, we investigate the effects of network-layer cooperation in a wireless three-node network with energy-harvesting nodes and bursty data traffic. By modelling energy har-vesting in each node as a queue (buffer) that stores the received energy, we study the interaction between data and energy queues when only knowledge of the arrival rates is available. The max-imum stable throughput (in packets/slot) of the source as well as the required transmitted power for both a non-cooperative and an orthogonal decode-and-forward cooperative schemes are derived in closed-form. We prove that cooperation achieves a higher max-imum stable throughout than direct link for scenarios with poor energy arrival rates. Index Terms—Cooperative networks, energy harvesting, power optimization, stable throughput. I.