Robust Cooperative Relaying in a Wireless LAN: Cross-Layer Design and Performance Analysis

—A key technology in cooperative communications is distributed space-time coding (DSTC) which achieves spatial diversity gain from multiple relays. A novel DSTC, called randomized distributed space-time coding (R-DSTC), shows considerable advantages over a regular DSTC in terms of system complexity. In this paper, we exploit the benefits of R-DSTC physical (PHY) layer and develop a distributed and opportunistic medium access control (MAC) layer protocol for R-DSTC deployment in an IEEE 802.11 wireless local area network (WLAN). Unlike other cooperative MAC designs, in our proposed PHY-MAC cross-layer framework, there is no need to decide which stations will serve as relays before each packet transmission. Instead, the MAC layer opportunistically recruits relay stations on the fly; any station that receives a packet from the source correctly forwards it to the destination. Through extensive simulations, we validate the efficiency of our MAC layer protocol and demonstrate that netwo...

• Type: Conference
• Year: 2009
• Where: GLOBECOM
• Authors: Pei Liu, Chun Nie, Elza Erkip, Shivendra S. Panwar
• Keywords: GLOBECOM 2009, Layer Protocol, Mac Layer, Space-time Coding, Telecommunications