Resource Allocation Strategy Based on RF Energy Harvesting in Heterogeneous Networks

Aiming at excessive users existing in a pico base station (PBS) of heterogeneous networks, the resource allocation problem of maximizing the total uplink throughput is investigated in this paper. By deploying a relay node with energy harvesting, some users of the PBS are transferred to the adjacent idle PBS. The resource allocation problem is formulated as an optimization problem. The objective is to maximize the total uplink throughput of users in the PBS under the constraints of the user's minimum data rate, the energy consumption, and transmission power of the relay node. The optimal solution is obtained by using the augmented Lagrange multiplier method. Simulation results show that the proposed method has higher throughput compared with the conventional method (i.e., some PBS users are transferred to the macro base station). Moreover, compared with the equal power method, the proposed method has an increase in terms of throughput to a certain degree.