The effect of cooperation at the network protocol level

Abstract--There has been a great deal of attention on cooperative communication which exploits the spatial diversity among antennas belonging to multiple terminals. Most of the existing work focuses on the physical layer and shows how message relaying can improve the Shannon capacity region, outage probability, diversity order, etc. But it is possible to use relays in simple, innovative ways that depend on the protocol properties at the medium access control (MAC) and network layers. In this paper we build upon prior work on such relay use by considering sets of nodes in simple topology configurations in which reaching a common destination is accomplished through direct links as well as relayed transmissions. Each non-destination node generates its own traffic for the destination but the nodes that are closer to the destination have the capability and option to relay packets from nodes farther afield. Channel quality is modeled by a reception probability which injects the physical laye...

• Type: Conference
• Year: 2008
• Where: WICON
• Authors: Beiyu Rong, Anthony Ephremides
• Keywords: Computer Networks, Physical Layer, Relay, Shannon Capacity Region, WICON 2008