Consumption Factor Optimization for Multihop Relaying over Nakagami-m Fading channels

In this paper, the energy efficiency of multihop relaying over Nakagami-m fading channels is investigated. The “consumption factor”, adopted as a metric to evaluate the energy efficiency, is derived for both amplify-and-forward and decodeand-forward relaying strategies. Then, based on the obtained expressions, we propose a power allocation strategy maximizing the consumption factor. In addition, a sub-optimal, low complexity, power allocation algorithm is proposed and analyzed, and the obtained power allocation scheme is compared in terms of energy efficiency to other power allocation schemes from the literature. Analytical and simulation results confirm the accuracy of our derivations, and assess the performance gains of the proposed approach.