Energy-Efficient Relay Selection and Optimal Relay Location in Cooperative Cellular Networks with Asymmetric Traffic

Energy-efficient communication is an important requirement for mobile relay networks due to the limited battery power of user terminals. This paper considers energy-efficient relaying schemes through selection of mobile relays in cooperative cellular systems with asymmetric traffic. The total energy consumption per information bit of the battery-powered terminals, i.e., the mobile station (MS) and the relay, is derived in theory. In the Joint Uplink and Downlink Relay Selection (JUDRS) scheme we proposed, the relay which minimizes the total energy consumption is selected. Additionally, the energy-efficient cooperation regions are investigated, and the optimal relay location is found for cooperative cellular systems with asymmetric traffic. The results reveal that the MS-relay and the relay-base station (BS) channels have different influence over relay selection decisions for optimal energy-efficiency. Information theoretic analysis of the diversity-multiplexing tradeoff (DMT) demonstrates that the proposed scheme achieves full spatial diversity in the quantity of cooperating terminals in this network. Finally, numerical results further confirm a significant energy efficiency gain of the proposed algorithm comparing to the previous best worse channel selection and best harmonic mean selection algorithms.