The Potential of Moving Relays - A Performance Analysis

In this paper we show the potential of moving relay nodes (MRNs), i.e., relays mounted on top of public transportation vehicles, to improve capacity, reliability and coverage for vehicular users in future wireless networks. To this end, we study and compare the performance of dual-hop MRN assisted transmission, dual-hop transmission assisted by a fixed relay node (FRN) deployed on the street, as well as of the baseline single-hop direct transmission. For an accurate comparison, we optimize the FRN position in terms of outage probability (OP). This position is a function of the pathloss, transmit power and vehicle penetration loss (VPL). The problem is investigated for Rayleigh fading under a fixed cell coverage. When VPL is moderate to high, MRN assisted transmission greatly outperforms transmission assisted by an FRN as well as direct transmission, hence it is very promising for future wireless systems.