Energy-Efficient Resource Allocation for Relay-Assisted Backscatter Communication Systems

Abstract

In this paper, we investigate energy-efficient resource allocation in relay-assisted backscatter communication systems. We employed a backscatter user device, and a relay device that supported to operate in different modes, i.e., the backscatter communication (BackCom) mode and the harvest-then transmit (HTT) mode, respectively. We formulate the system energy efficiency (EE) maximization problem by jointly optimizing the power and time allocations. A dual-layer iterative resource allocation algorithm that separates power allocation from time allocation is presented. The inner-layer is responsible for optimizing power allocation, while the outer-layer determines the time allocation strategy. Finally, an algorithm is proposed for jointly determining the optimal solution. Simulation results show that the proposed resource allocation algorithm can increase the system EE.