An Opportunistic Cooperative Packet Transmission Scheme in Wireless Multi-hop Networks

Combining cooperative communications and opportunistic routing, an opportunistic cooperative packet transmission scheme is proposed to enhance the end-to-end performance of the wireless multi-hop networks. The proposed scheme divides the multi-hop route into multiple virtual multiple-input-multiple-output (MIMO) transmissions. Before each transmission, based on the idea of opportunistic routing, a cluster head (CH) is introduced to determine the multiple transmitters and multiple receivers within the transmission range of CH. Then, the CH organizes the cooperative packet transmission, in which multiple transmitters cooperatively beamform to multiple receivers simultaneously. According to the transmission results, update the CH node and start the new cooperative transmission. Iteratively, the transmission lasts until the destination has successfully received the packet. The simulation results demonstrate that the proposed opportunistic cooperative packet transmission scheme is effective on increasing the number of successful packet transmission, shortening the end-to-end transmission delay and improving the packet arrival ratio and transmission efficiency in comparison with other existing routing schemes.