Secure Communications in the Presence of a Buffer-Aided Wireless-Powered Relay With Self-Energy Recycling

Abstract: We consider a relay-assisted wireless network, where the energy-harvesting buffer-aided relay node is powered by radio-frequency signals from a source node wishing to communicate with its destination. We propose two secure cooperative protocols for a network composed of a source node equipped with a data buffer communicating with its destination in the presence of a buffer-aided relay node and an eavesdropper. Our proposed protocols are designed based on the channel state information and the buffer state information at the source and relay nodes. The burstiness of data at the source node queue (buffer) and the energy recycling process at the relay are taken into account in our analysis. In addition, we take the decoding and signal processing circuit power consumption constraints into consideration. For the limiting case of an infinite-size battery at the relay, we derive a sufficient condition for the energy queue to saturate. Our numerical results demonstrate the throughput gains of our proposed protocols.