Cooperative communications in mobile ad hoc networks

he motivation of this article is to clarify and help resolve the gap between the link abstraction used in traditional wireless networking and its much broader definition used in the context of cooperative communications, which has received significant interest as an untapped means for improving performance of relay transmission systems operating over the ever-challenging wireless medium. The common theme of most research in this area is to optimize physical layer performance measures without considering in much detail how cooperation interacts with higher layers and improves network performance measures. Because these issues are important for enabling cooperative communications to practice in real-world networks, especially for the increasingly important class of mobile ad hoc networks (MANETs), the goals of this article are to survey basic cooperative communications and outline two potential architectures for cooperative MANETs. The first architecture relies on an existing clustered infrastructure: cooperative relays are centrally controlled by cluster heads. In another architecture without explicit clustering, cooperative links are formed by request of a source node in an ad hoc, decentralized fashion. In either case, cooperative communication considerably improves the network connectivity. Although far from a complete study, these architectures provide modified wireless link abstractions and suggest tradeoffs in complexity at the physical and higher layers. Many opportunities and challenges remain, including distributed synchronization, coding, and signal processing among multiple radios; modeling of new link abstractions at higher layers; and multiaccess and routing protocols for networks of cooperative links.

[1]  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).

[2]  ScaglioneA.,et al.  Opportunistic large arrays , 2003 .

[3]  Donald F. Towsley,et al.  Collaboration Improves the Connectivity of Wireless Networks , 2006, Proceedings IEEE INFOCOM 2006. 25TH IEEE International Conference on Computer Communications.

[4]  Elza Erkip,et al.  Cooperative regions and partner choice in coded Cooperative systems , 2006, IEEE Transactions on Communications.

[5]  Sennur Ulukus,et al.  Effects of cooperation on the secrecy of multiple access channels with generalized feedback , 2008, 2008 42nd Annual Conference on Information Sciences and Systems.

[6]  A. Robert Calderbank,et al.  Space-Time block codes from orthogonal designs , 1999, IEEE Trans. Inf. Theory.

[7]  Anna Scaglione,et al.  Asymptotic analysis of multistage cooperative broadcast in wireless networks , 2006, IEEE Transactions on Information Theory.

[8]  Michael Gastpar,et al.  Cooperative strategies and capacity theorems for relay networks , 2005, IEEE Transactions on Information Theory.

[9]  E. Meulen,et al.  Three-terminal communication channels , 1971, Advances in Applied Probability.

[10]  Siavash M. Alamouti,et al.  A simple transmit diversity technique for wireless communications , 1998, IEEE J. Sel. Areas Commun..

[11]  Jan Mietzner,et al.  Analysis of the expected error performance of cooperative wireless networks employing distributed space-time codes , 2004, IEEE Global Telecommunications Conference, 2004. GLOBECOM '04..

[12]  Aydano B. Carleial,et al.  Multiple-access channels with different generalized feedback signals , 1982, IEEE Trans. Inf. Theory.

[13]  Sergio Barbarossa,et al.  Distributed Space-Time Coding for Cooperative Networks , 2006 .

[14]  Lutz H.-J. Lampe,et al.  Distributed space-time block coding , 2006, IEEE Transactions on Communications.

[15]  Abbas El Gamal,et al.  Capacity theorems for the relay channel , 1979, IEEE Trans. Inf. Theory.

[16]  Halim Yanikomeroglu,et al.  A theoretical characterization of the multihop wireless communications channel with diversity , 2001, GLOBECOM'01. IEEE Global Telecommunications Conference (Cat. No.01CH37270).

[17]  Piyush Gupta,et al.  Critical Power for Asymptotic Connectivity in Wireless Networks , 1999 .

[18]  Shlomo Shamai,et al.  Information theoretic considerations for cellular mobile radio , 1994 .

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

[20]  Elza Erkip,et al.  Increasing uplink capacity via user cooperation diversity , 1998, Proceedings. 1998 IEEE International Symposium on Information Theory (Cat. No.98CH36252).

[21]  Anna Scaglione,et al.  Opportunistic large arrays: cooperative transmission in wireless multihop ad hoc networks to reach far distances , 2003, IEEE Trans. Signal Process..

[22]  Anna Scaglione,et al.  Opportunistic Large Arrays , 2002 .

[23]  Hesham El Gamal,et al.  Distributed space-time filtering for cooperative wireless networks , 2003, GLOBECOM '03. IEEE Global Telecommunications Conference (IEEE Cat. No.03CH37489).

[24]  Roy D. Yates,et al.  Efficient multihop broadcast for wideband systems , 2003, Multiantenna Channels: Capacity, Coding and Signal Processing.

[25]  R. Gallager,et al.  The Gaussian parallel relay network , 2000, 2000 IEEE International Symposium on Information Theory (Cat. No.00CH37060).

[26]  Thomas M. Cover,et al.  Elements of Information Theory , 2005 .

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

[28]  Anna Scaglione,et al.  Randomized Space-Time Coding for Distributed Cooperative Communication , 2007, IEEE Transactions on Signal Processing.

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

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