Cooperative communication in wireless networks: Flow-optimized designs and information-theoretic characterizations

of Dissertation Presented to the Graduate School of the University of Florida in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy COOPERATIVE COMMUNICATION IN WIRELESS NETWORKS: FLOW-OPTIMIZED DESIGNS AND INFORMATION-THEORETIC CHARACTERIZATIONS By Debdeep Chatterjee August 2010 Chair: Tan F. Wong Major: Electrical and Computer Engineering The challenges involved in the design of efficient communication systems for the wireless medium can be attributed to the fact that the wireless medium possesses certain unique characteristics, the most important ones being the broadcast nature of the wireless medium, the susceptibility to interference effects, and the effects of path loss and fading on wireless link quality. Cooperation between different transceivers can potentially aid further development of next-generation wireless communication systems that demand high data rates and an excellent quality of service (QoS). This is possible by exploiting the broadcast nature of the wireless medium, and the diversity advantages that a multi-user system offers. We first consider a general single-source-single-destination wireless relay network and propose an information flow-optimized cooperative transmission design that achieves the optimal diversity-multiplexing tradeoff. Next, we apply game-theoretic techniques to the problems of resource allocation and characterization of cooperative behavior in a two-user fading multiple-access channel (MAC), with uncertainty about the channel state information at the transmitters (CSIT). In the third part of the dissertation, a more active form the above cooperative behavior is studied via a two-user fading cooperative multiple-access channel (CMAC), where each user, along with transmitting its own information to the destination, helps the