Bidirectional relaying with energy harvesting capable relay: outage analysis for Nakagami-m fading

This paper analyzes outage probability of bidirectional relaying (BDR) where two power-unconstrained single-antenna sources communicate with each other under assistance of a self-powered half-duplex single-antenna relay capable of energy harvesting and amplify-and-forward implementation. The relay harvests radio energy from both sources to power its relaying operation with the power splitting method. For outage analysis of the BDR for Nakagami-m fading, an exact formula is first proposed in closed-form. Through this formula, influences of important specifications (time switching ratio, power splitting ratio, energy conversion efficiency, fading severity, target transmission rate, transmit power of each source, distances from sources to relay) on the outage probability are then evaluated. Finally, Monte-Carlo simulations are generated to corroborate the proposed formula.