A framework for cooperative communications at the system level

In order to improve the communication efficiency without using multi-antennae terminals, cooperative communications implement one or several single antenna relays to assist the transmission between a source and a destination. The design of such a cooperative network, involves several layers of the OSI model. Transmission and multiplexing techniques are addressed at the physical layer whereas the management of the cooperative network (activation of a cooperative mode, selection of relays) is done at the Medium Access Control (MAC) layer and the layers above. After an overview of protocols that have been designed in this domain, we propose an original framework of a cooperative network, at the system level. Inspired from models of the ITU normative organization, our cooperative network model is based on two planes: a data plane and a control plane. A validation of the framework is given by modeling an existing cooperative MAC protocol.

[1]  Gregory W. Wornell,et al.  Cooperative diversity in wireless networks: Efficient protocols and outage behavior , 2004, IEEE Transactions on Information Theory.

[2]  Emre Telatar,et al.  Capacity of Multi-antenna Gaussian Channels , 1999, Eur. Trans. Telecommun..

[3]  Chenyang Yang,et al.  A MAC protocol supporting cooperative diversity for distributed wireless ad hoc networks , 2005, 2005 IEEE 16th International Symposium on Personal, Indoor and Mobile Radio Communications.

[4]  M.Z. Win,et al.  Outage-Optimal Cooperative Communications with Regenerative Relays , 2006, 2006 40th Annual Conference on Information Sciences and Systems.

[5]  Aytac Azgin,et al.  Cooperative MAC and routing protocols for wireless ad hoc networks , 2005, GLOBECOM '05. IEEE Global Telecommunications Conference, 2005..

[6]  Elza Erkip,et al.  User cooperation diversity. Part I. System description , 2003, IEEE Trans. Commun..

[7]  Jesús Gómez-Vilardebó,et al.  Cooperation on Demand Protocols for Wireless Networks , 2007, 2007 IEEE 18th International Symposium on Personal, Indoor and Mobile Radio Communications.

[8]  Gregory W. Wornell,et al.  Distributed space-time-coded protocols for exploiting cooperative diversity in wireless networks , 2003, IEEE Trans. Inf. Theory.

[9]  Sathya Narayanan,et al.  CoopMAC: A Cooperative MAC for Wireless LANs , 2007, IEEE Journal on Selected Areas in Communications.

[10]  Dong Wang,et al.  Cooperative MAC Protocol with Automatic Relay Selection in Distributed Wireless Networks , 2007, Fifth Annual IEEE International Conference on Pervasive Computing and Communications Workshops (PerComW'07).

[11]  Aria Nosratinia,et al.  Diversity through coded cooperation , 2006, IEEE Transactions on Wireless Communications.

[12]  Marco Levorato,et al.  Distributed Cooperative Routing and Hybrid ARQ in MIMO-BLAST Ad Hoc Networks , 2007, IEEE GLOBECOM 2007 - IEEE Global Telecommunications Conference.

[13]  Gregory W. Wornell,et al.  An efficient protocol for realizing cooperative diversity in wireless networks , 2001, Proceedings. 2001 IEEE International Symposium on Information Theory (IEEE Cat. No.01CH37252).

[14]  Hyundong Shin,et al.  Cooperative Communications with Outage-Optimal Opportunistic Relaying , 2007, IEEE Transactions on Wireless Communications.

[15]  Shivendra S. Panwar,et al.  A Cooperative MAC Protocol for Ad Hoc Wireless Networks , 2007, Fifth Annual IEEE International Conference on Pervasive Computing and Communications Workshops (PerComW'07).

[16]  Michalis Faloutsos,et al.  A Cross-Layer Framework for Exploiting Virtual MISO Links in Mobile Ad Hoc Networks , 2007, IEEE Transactions on Mobile Computing.