Relaying in the Internet of Things (IoT): A Survey

The deployment of relays between Internet of Things (IoT) end devices and gateways can improve link quality. In cellular-based IoT, relays have the potential to reduce base station overload. The energy expended in single-hop long-range communication can be reduced if relays listen to transmissions of end devices and forward these observations to gateways. However, incorporating relays into IoT networks faces some challenges. IoT end devices are designed primarily for uplink communication of small-sized observations toward the network; hence, opportunistically using end devices as relays needs a redesign of both the medium access control (MAC) layer protocol of such end devices and possible addition of new communication interfaces. Additionally, the wake-up time of IoT end devices needs to be synchronized with that of the relays. For cellular-based IoT, the possibility of using infrastructure relays exists, and noncellular IoT networks can leverage the presence of mobile devices for relaying, for example, in remote healthcare. However, the latter presents problems of incentivizing relay participation and managing the mobility of relays. Furthermore, although relays can increase the lifetime of IoT networks, deploying relays implies the need for additional batteries to power them. This can erode the energy efficiency gain that relays offer. Therefore, designing relay-assisted IoT networks that provide acceptable trade-offs is key, and this goes beyond adding an extra transmit RF chain to a relay-enabled IoT end device. There has been increasing research interest in IoT relaying, as demonstrated in the available literature. Works that consider these issues are surveyed in this paper to provide insight into the state of the art, provide design insights for network designers and motivate future research directions

Energy-efficient non-orthogonal multiple access for wireless communication system

Non-orthogonal multiple access (NOMA) has been recognized as a potential solution for enhancing the throughput of next-generation wireless communications. NOMA is a potential option for 5G networks due to its superiority in providing better spectrum efficiency (SE) compared to orthogonal multiple access (OMA). From the perspective of green communication, energy efficiency (EE) has become a new performance indicator. A systematic literature review is conducted to investigate the available energy efficient approach researchers have employed in NOMA. We identified 19 subcategories related to EE in NOMA out of 108 publications where 92 publications are from the IEEE website. To help the reader comprehend, a summary for each category is explained and elaborated in detail. From the literature review, it had been observed that NOMA can enhance the EE of wireless communication systems. At the end of this survey, future research particularly in machine learning algorithms such as reinforcement learning (RL) and deep reinforcement learning (DRL) for NOMA are also discussed

Simultaneous Wireless Information and Power Transfer for Decode-and-Forward Multi-Hop Relay Systems in Energy-Constrained IoT Networks

This paper studies a multi-hop decode-and-forward (DF) simultaneous wireless information and power transfer (SWIPT) system where a source sends data to a destination with the aid of multi-hop relays which do not depend on an external energy source. To this end, we apply power splitting (PS) based SWIPT relaying protocol so that the relays can harvest energy from the received signals from the previous hop to reliably forward the information of the source to the destination. We aim to solve two optimization problems relevant to our system model. First, we minimize the transmit power at the source under the individual quality-of-service (QoS) threshold constraints of the relays and the destination nodes by optimizing PS ratios at the relays. The second is to maximize the minimum system achievable rate by optimizing the PS ratio at each relay. Based on convex optimization techniques, the globally optimal PS ratio solution is obtained in closed-form for both problems. By setting the QoS threshold constraint the same for each node for the source transmit power problem, we discovered that either the minimum source transmit power or the maximum system throughput can be found using the same approach. Numerical results demonstrate the superiority of the proposed optimal SWIPT PS design over conventional fixed PS ratio schemes.Comment: 14 pages, 14 figures, Accepted for Publication in IEEE Internet of Things Journa