In this paper, we present a joint power allocation and adaptive link selection protocol for an orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM)-based network consists of one source node i.e., base station (BS), one destination node i.e., (MU) and a buffer aided decode and forward (DF) relay node. Our objective is to maximize the average throughput of the system via power loading over different subcarriers at source and relay nodes. A separate power budget is assumed at each transmitting node to make the system more practical. In order to form our solution more tractable, a decomposition framework is implemented to solve the mixed integer optimization problem. Further, less complex suboptimal approaches have also been presented and simulation results are provided to endorse the efficiency of our designed algorithms.Buffer aided relaying (BAR) emerged as a new paradigm for the wireless communication systems and has provided freedom to the link selection, i.e., the choice to choose a particular hop for transmission in a given time slot [9]. With this addition, the resource allocation problem becomes more challenging and is coupled with the link selection. The optimization techniques designed for memoryless relaying nodes cannot be applied for BAR transmission. Thus, the problem of power allocation and link selection for the BAR has received significant attention in the research community [10][11][12][13][14][15][16][17][18][19][20]. Considering a full-duplex network, power allocation at the source and relay node was studied in [10]. Authors maximized the source arrival rate under the assumption of imperfect self-interference cancellation and statistical delay constraints. For the underlay cognitive radio network with buffer aided DF relay, an adaptive link selection scheme was presented in [11]. A closed-form expression for the data rate was derived by assuming peak power and interference constraints at the secondary nodes. The authors in [12] considered a system where multiple source nodes are communicating with a single destination through a common BAR. Under the total transmit power constraint at each node, this work presented a link selection and a power allocation strategy.The problem of cross-layer resource allocation considering asymmetric time duration over two hops was investigated in [13]. The work in [14] proposed different BAR schemes under full-duplex (FD) relay transmission with self-interference cancellation (SIC) capability at the relaying node. The results showed the considerable gains of the proposed scheme over the conventional FD relay transmission. Further, the authors in [15] studied the security and the delay issues in the buffer enhanced dual-hop transmission. The relay selection schemes for links with equal weights have recently been explored in [16]. Depending on the status of the buffer at each relaying node, the authors in [17] proposed a max-link selection analysis framework. With the Markov chain approach, analytical expressions for the outage probability, the average bit error rate, a...