End-to-end throughput with cooperative communication in multi-channel wireless networks

Abstract

Although cooperative communication has been proposed at the physical layer to address multi-path fading effects, how physical layer gains with cooperative communication can translate to tangible performance benefits in end-to-end flows remains to be an open problem. This paper represents one step forward towards a deeper understanding of the interplay between end-to-end throughput and physical layer cooperative communication, in the general context of multi-hop multi-channel wireless networks. Based on a decode-and-forward physical layer design with rateless codes, we reformulate the problem of routing and channel assignment to account for physical layer cooperation. We design a distributed protocol to solve the new problem. Our simulation results have validated the effectiveness of our protocol to offer a substantial gain with respect to stabilizing the offered aggregate throughput in the network. © 2010 Springer-Verlag.