Throughput-fairness optimization in energy-limited user-relay wireless networks

Throughput and fairness are conflicting objectives in many networking scenarios. To address this issue, relays have been considered/used to improve the overall throughput without sacrificing fairness. However, we observe that in a relay-based wireless network, throughput-based fairness significantly limits the performance of the relay users when they are energy limited. To overcome this issue, we propose the notion of max-min energy efficiency throughput fairness, by which relay users with a higher energy consumption can reap a higher throughput. We further propose an efficient data rate allocation algorithm to achieve the fairness objective in a multi-hop relay wireless network. Simulation results show the advantages of the proposed fairness policy compared to other fairness objectives.