Title: Cooperative protocols for multiple-source multiple-relay wireless networks

Authors: J. Zhang, T.M. Lok

Addresses: Wireless Networking and Communications Group, Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, The University of Texas at Austin, TX, USA. ' Department of Information Engineering, The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong

Abstract: In this paper, we study the cooperative communications in wireless systems with n_s source nodes, n_r relay nodes and single destination node. We propose cooperative protocols and analyse the system performance of the cooperation systems. For n_s = 1, n_r > 1, the nodes cooperate in a repetition way. The impact of the detection error at the relay node on the system performance is analysed, and then a relay selection protocol is proposed to compensate for such effect. For n_s > 1, n_r > 1, we propose a cooperative coding protocol, in which the relay nodes not only decode and forward the symbols from the source nodes, but also encode the incoming symbols according to the pre-assigned cooperative code. This brings higher efficiency and flexibility compared with the repetition-coded cooperation system with single source node. The analysis and the simulation results demonstrate that the proposed system achieves full diversity order.

Keywords: cooperative communication; cooperative diversity; fading channels; wireless ad hoc networks; wireless networks; relay selection protocols; cooperative coding protocols; cooperation.

DOI: 10.1504/IJSNET.2008.022705

International Journal of Sensor Networks, 2008 Vol.4 No.4, pp.209 - 219

Published online: 25 Jan 2009 *

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