{"status":"ok","message-type":"work","message-version":"1.0.0","message":{"indexed":{"date-parts":[[2026,7,30]],"date-time":"2026-07-30T15:23:24Z","timestamp":1785425004824,"version":"3.56.0"},"reference-count":38,"publisher":"MDPI AG","issue":"3","license":[{"start":{"date-parts":[[2026,7,6]],"date-time":"2026-07-06T00:00:00Z","timestamp":1783296000000},"content-version":"vor","delay-in-days":0,"URL":"https:\/\/creativecommons.org\/licenses\/by\/4.0\/"}],"funder":[{"DOI":"10.13039\/501100007782","name":"Tshwane University of Technology","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","id":[{"id":"10.13039\/501100007782","id-type":"DOI","asserted-by":"crossref"}]},{"id":[{"id":"https:\/\/ror.org\/037mrss42","id-type":"ROR","asserted-by":"publisher"}]}],"content-domain":{"domain":[],"crossmark-restriction":false},"short-container-title":["Network"],"abstract":"<jats:p>The internet of things (IoT) has rapidly evolved into a ubiquitous communication paradigm for enabling the deployment of autonomous wireless networks across diverse application domains. However, the limited energy storage capacity and computational resources of IoT devices (IoTDs) pose a serious concern to their long-term sustainability and the expected quality of service delivery. Moreover, in the foreseeable era of the internet of everything, centralised network resource management is likely to constrain network scalability. To tackle these challenges in the current and next-generation communication networks, the adoption of adaptive and lightweight computational frameworks coupled with energy-efficient transmission strategies is essential. To demonstrate this, we exploit the concept of cooperative communication and radio frequency-based energy-harvesting to improve the network throughput while maintaining power supply to the IoTDs. Furthermore, to intelligently and autonomously perform resource allocation, we employ the reinforcement learning frameworks, particularly state\u2013action\u2013reward\u2013state\u2013action (SARSA) and Q-learning. Based on key performance evaluation metrics, we compare our findings with the baseline methods, including the equal, random, and greedy power level selection schemes, with SARSA exhibiting the most favourable performance trade-offs.<\/jats:p>","DOI":"10.3390\/network6030049","type":"journal-article","created":{"date-parts":[[2026,7,6]],"date-time":"2026-07-06T12:01:37Z","timestamp":1783339297000},"page":"49","update-policy":"https:\/\/doi.org\/10.3390\/mdpi_crossmark_policy","source":"Crossref","is-referenced-by-count":0,"title":["Reinforcement Learning for Resource Allocation in Energy-Harvesting Cooperative IoT Networks"],"prefix":"10.3390","volume":"6","author":[{"ORCID":"https:\/\/orcid.org\/0000-0002-5224-5400","authenticated-orcid":false,"given":"Olumide","family":"Alamu","sequence":"first","affiliation":[{"name":"Department of Electrical Engineering\/F\u2019SATI, Tshwane University of Technology, Pretoria 0001, South Africa"}],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]},{"ORCID":"https:\/\/orcid.org\/0000-0003-3013-474X","authenticated-orcid":false,"given":"Thomas O.","family":"Olwal","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"Department of Electrical Engineering\/F\u2019SATI, Tshwane University of Technology, Pretoria 0001, South Africa"}],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]},{"ORCID":"https:\/\/orcid.org\/0000-0002-2639-2757","authenticated-orcid":false,"given":"Munguakonkwa Emmanuel","family":"Migabo","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"Department of Electrical Engineering\/F\u2019SATI, Tshwane University of Technology, Pretoria 0001, South Africa"}],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]}],"member":"1968","published-online":{"date-parts":[[2026,7,6]]},"reference":[{"key":"ref_1","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"4018","DOI":"10.1109\/JIOT.2025.3642935","article-title":"The Internet of Nature Things (IoNT): Pioneering a New Frontier in Environmental Monitoring and Sustainable Ecosystem Management","volume":"13","author":"Ullah","year":"2026","journal-title":"IEEE Internet Things J."},{"key":"ref_2","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"18993","DOI":"10.1109\/JIOT.2025.3553153","article-title":"A Comprehensive Survey on Data Converters for IoT Applications: Scope, Issues, and Future Directions","volume":"12","author":"Sharma","year":"2025","journal-title":"IEEE Internet Things J."},{"key":"ref_3","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","unstructured":"Ribeiro, A.R., Andrade, A.C.S., dos Santos, G.L., Marcondes Lopes, G.D., Oliveira, E.M.d., Souza, A.D.d., and Machado, J.B. 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