Energy Efficiency of Relay-Assisted Communications with Interference

Relay-assisted communication techniques are important in modern wireless networks to extend coverage and save en- ergy given a target performance. The maximization of these benefits requires proper methods to allocate power between source and relay nodes. In the presence of others cells with sources, destinations, and relays, the mutual interference can be a limiting factor which needs to be characterized. We pro- pose a framework for analysis and design of relay-assisted communications which accounts for multichannel communi- cations in each link, geometrical setting, interference, fading channel, power allocation, while being general with respect to coding and modulation techniques. We compare the per- formance with and without relay-assistance to quantify the benefits of relay and power allocation in terms of energy saving with respect to direct transmission