Optimal radio resource management in multihop relay networks

Abstract

Multihop relay networks (MR) use relay stations (RS) to extend or enhance the coverage of a base station (BS) in a cellular network. The base station is attached to a wired backhaul. Relay stations use wireless transmission to connect to the base station and to the mobile stations (MS), while direct BS-MS connection is also possible. Low cost relay technologies are recently proposed for OFDM based broadband wireless technologies. Especially for low-cost relay stations that have single radio interface how to share the channels and allocate proper amount of bandwidth/power to the base station (BS), relay stations (RSs) and the mobile stations (MSs) is an important issue. This work develops methods for radio resource management in MR networks supporting heterogeneous traffic. We propose a scheduling method, where the transmission of base station to each relay station and transmissions of each relay station to its respective mobile stations (i.e. composite links) are scheduled in a TDMA fashion and the resource allocation in those microcells are performed in an OFDMA manner. We numerically evaluate the performance of our proposed scheme with respect to a number of parameters.