Cooperative Relaying In Dynamic Wireless Networks Under Interference Conditions

Abstract

An ever-growing demand for pervasive Internet access has boosted the deployment of wireless local networks in the past decades. Nevertheless, wireless technologies face performance limitations due to unstable propagation conditions and mobility of devices. In face of multi-path propagation and low data-rate stations, cooperative relaying promises gains in performance and reliability. However, cooperation procedures are unstable, due to their dependency upon current channel conditions, and introduce overhead that can endanger performance, especially when nodes are mobile. This paper presents an introduction to cooperative relaying, and describes a novel link layer protocol, called RelaySpot, able to implement cooperative relaying in dynamic networks, based upon opportunistic relay selection, cooperative relay scheduling and switching.