Physical Layer Performance of a Cooperative Amplify and Forward Scheme for MIMO WLANs

Abstract

This paper proposes a novel cooperative amplify and forward (CAF) architecture for MIMO WLANs to improve their coverage and transmission rates, without requiring any modifications in the IEEE 802.11 standards at the clients. System models are used for analyzing the physical layer of CAF networks, and compared with the conventional amplify-and-forward (AF) and decode-and-forward (DF) networks. Numerical results demonstrate that the CAF network clearly outperforms conventional 802.11 networks, and AF and DF networks in terms of coverage and throughput.