Lifetime maximization of cooperative networks with mean channel gain information

A simple but effective relay-selection and power-allocation scheme is proposed to maximize the lifetime of decode-and-forward (DF) cooperative networks under the constraint that only the mean channel gain information is available at the transmitters. The new scheme takes both channel state information (CSI) and residual energy information (REI) into consideration. To evaluate the performance of the proposed scheme, three typical relay-selection and power-allocation schemes, i.e., maximum residual energy (MRE), minimum transmit power (MTP) and equal transmit power (ETP) are considered. Simulation results show that the proposed scheme outperforms the MRE and the MTP in lifetime duration and outage probability, while needing much less signal overhead compared with the ETP.