Energy Analysis in Cooperative Machine-Type Communications with Reconfigurable RF Transceivers

In this paper, we consider reconfigurable RF transceivers in cooperative communications towards improving the energy efficiency. More specifically, we combine different operating modes of the power amplifier (PA) and the low noise amplifier (LNA). Our results show that the proper optimization of these modes combined with cooperative relaying may be considerably more energy efficient than non-cooperative schemes with multiple antennas over moderate and long distances. Results also show that most reconfigurability depends on the relay node, since it only acts when necessary.