Balanced inter-relay charging buffer-aided IOT networks

Abstract Although energy harvesting enables self-sustaining operation in relay-assisted networks, its effectiveness is often hindered by the unpredictable nature of energy availability, which can result in transmission outages. Additionally, communication failures may arise due to buffer overflow or underflow—where fully occupied buffers prevent data reception, and empty buffers prevent transmission. Many existing approaches focus on mitigating either energy limitations or buffer states in isolation, leaving a gap in performance under conditions where both constraints simultaneously contribute to outage events. This work introduces a novel relay selection framework tailored for energy-harvesting buffer-aided cooperative networks by jointly incorporating two complementary mechanisms: inter-relay charging (IRC), which allows inactive relays to harvest energy not only from the source but also from active neighboring relays, and buffer balancing, which initiates inter-relay data transfers during idle periods to evenly distribute buffer loads. A comprehensive probabilistic analysis employing Poisson and binomial distributions is conducted to evaluate the impact of this integrated strategy on the system’s outage probability. Simulation results confirm that the proposed approach significantly improves outage performance and throughput, particularly under conditions of channel asymmetry. These outcomes validate the potential of the combined use of IRC and balancing as a robust solution for enhancing the efficiency and resilience of next-generation IoT-oriented cooperative networks.