Two-hop Wireless Research Articles

Performance analysis of multiple-antenna cooperative networks under Weibull fading

In wireless communications, cooperative relaying is well-known to enhance the overall system performance, but implementation and cost constraints stand against its wide deployment. This paper investigates the performance of cooperative relays with and without multiple antennas under independent and identically distributed (i.i.d.) Weibull faded channels in a two-hop wireless network. We consider the Weibull fading channel model due to its flexibility in describing the radio propagation environment more than the classical Rayleigh model. Our study relies on applying selection combining (SC) along with threshold decode and forward (TDF) protocol at the cooperative relays as a good compromise between cost and performance. In addition, maximal ratio combining (MRC) is used at the destination. We derive analytical expressions for the end-to-end (E2E) error performance of the network under such scenario and provide simulation results to confirm the validity of the obtained analytical expressions.

Wireless Network Coding Diversity Technique Based on Hybrid AF/DF Relay Method Employing Adaptive Power Control at Relay Node for Bidirectional Two-Hop Wireless Networks

In this paper, we propose a wireless network coding diversity technique based on hybrid amplify-and-forward/decode-and-forward relay method employing adaptive power control for two-hop wireless networks in order to improve relay node position flexibility. Wireless network coding diversity based on hybrid relay method selects either modulation symbol level wireless network coding diversity or bit sequence level wireless network coding diversity as its wireless network coding diversity scheme according to the cyclic redundancy check result at the relay node. Moreover, the adaptive power control scheme proposed here controls the relay node's transmit power according to its position. Computer simulations verify that wireless network coding diversity based on hybrid relay method employing the adaptive power control scheme can expand the area wherein the relay node can be located while satisfying the required communication quality by 4.56 times compared to the conventional wireless network coding diversity scheme. Therefore, we confirm that our proposed scheme can increase relay node position flexibility.

Training-Symbol Embedded, High-Rate, Single-Symbol ML-Decodable, Distributed STBCs for Relay Networks

Distributed space-time block codes (DSTBCs) from complex orthogonal designs (CODs) (both square and nonsquare), coordinate interleaved orthogonal designs (CIODs), and Clifford unitary weight designs (CUWDs) are known to lose their single-symbol ML decodable (SSD) property when used in two-hop wireless relay networks using amplify and forward protocol. For such networks, in this paper, three new classes of high rate, training-symbol embedded (TSE) SSD DSTBCs are constructed: TSE-CODs, TSE-CIODs, and TSE-CUWDs. The proposed codes include the training symbols inside the structure of the code which is shown to be the key point to obtain the SSD property along with the channel estimation capability. TSE-CODs are shown to offer full-diversity for arbitrary complex constellations and the constellations for which TSE-CIODs and TSE-CUWDs offer full-diversity are characterized. It is shown that DSTBCs from nonsquare TSE-CODs provide better rates (in symbols per channel use) when compared to the known SSD DSTBCs for relay networks. Important from the practical point of view, the proposed DSTBCs do not contain any zeros in their codewords and as a result, antennas of the relay nodes do not undergo a sequence of switch on/off transitions within every codeword, and, thus, avoid the antenna switching problem.

Quality-of-service performance bounds in wireless multi-hop relaying networks

The theoretical analysis on quality-of-service (QoS) performances is required to provide the guides for the developments of the next-generation wireless networks. As a good analysis tool, the probabilistic network calculus with moment generating functions (MGFs) recently can be used for delay and backlog performance measures in wireless networks. Different from the existed studies which mostly focused on the single-hop networks with single-user under a two state Markov channel model, this study develops an analytical framework for wireless multi-hop relaying networks under the finite-state Markov channel by using probabilistic network calculus with MGFs. By using the concatenation character of network calculus, the authors regard a two-hop wireless relaying channel as a single server equivalently, which consisting of two dynamic servers in series. When the single-user model is straightforwardly extended and applied in multi-user scenarios, the state space of service process is increased exponentially with the number of users, which is only applicable in case of very small user number. Then, in order to avoid the limitation of user number, the authors propose to reflect the multi-user effects by using the equivalent data rate of the modified service process, whose transition and stationary probabilities are kept unchanged with those in single-user scenarios. Next, delay and backlog bounds of multi-hop wireless relaying networks are derived with the proposed analytical framework. Simulation results show that analytical bounds match simulation results, whose accuracy depends on the required violation probability. The effectiveness of the relaying techniques in improving the performances is also demonstrated.

Performance Evaluation of Two-Hop Wireless Link under Rayleigh and Nakagami-m Fading Channel for 8-PSK and 16-QAM

One of the major challenges in wireless communications, especially in urban area, is to detect the digital data under different fading environment and additive white Gaussian noise (AWGN). In a two-hop wireless links, each link is affected by fading and noise which degrades the overall performance of the communication system. In this paper performance of two-hop link is analyzed under Rayleigh and Nakagami-m fading environments separately for 8-PSK and 16-QAM modulation schemes. The objective of the paper is to observe the relative impact of two fading environments on the two above mentioned modulation schemes if no combining scheme or error correction measure is taken on the repeater station.

Network Code Design for Orthogonal Two-Hop Network with Broadcasting Relay: A Joint Source-Channel-Network Coding Approach

This paper addresses network code design for robust transmission of sources over an orthogonal two-hop wireless network with a broadcasting relay. The network consists of multiple sources and destinations in which each destination, benefiting the relay signal, intends to decode a subset of the sources. Two special instances of this network are orthogonal broadcast relay channel and the orthogonal multiple access relay channel. The focus is on complexity constrained scenarios, e.g., for wireless sensor networks, where channel coding is practically imperfect. Taking a source-channel and network coding approach, we design the network code (mapping) at the relay such that the average reconstruction distortion at the destinations is minimized. To this end, by decomposing the distortion into its components, an efficient design algorithm is proposed. The resulting network code is nonlinear and substantially outperforms the best performing linear network code. A motivating formulation of a family of structured nonlinear network codes is also presented. Numerical results and comparison with linear network coding at the relay and the corresponding distortion-power bound demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed schemes and a promising research direction.

CASHeW: Cluster-based Adaptive Scheme for Multimedia Delivery in Heterogeneous Wireless Networks

Multimedia streaming over heterogeneous wireless networks has attracted significant interest in recent years from both telecom network operators and end users. However, the heterogeneity of the wireless network makes it very difficult to synchronize real-time multimedia streaming to different types of end-user devices across different wireless networks. In addition, with different delay and packet loss across different networks, multimedia delivery over the heterogeneous wireless networks cannot provide good quality streaming video. This paper proposes CASHeW--a novel cluster-based design with an in-built feedback-based adaptive mechanism that results in a higher video perceived quality in two-hop heterogeneous wireless network environments. CASHeW employs a proxy-client-server mechanism between the base station (BS) and the end-user; and importantly uses a quality-oriented adaptive scheme for efficient multimedia delivery. Simulation-based tests indicate that the performance of CASHeW not only outperforms transport layer adaptive delivery protocols like the TCP-Friendly Rate Control Protocol (TFRCP) and Loss Delay Adaptation (LDA+), but also is better than that of medium access control (MAC) layer protocols such as the Receiver Based Auto Rate (RBAR) and Enhanced Distributed Channel Access (EDCA) in terms of average perceived quality, average bit rate and loss rate.

Distributed Space-Time Block Codes for Two-Hop Wireless Relay Networks (Invited Paper)

Recently, the idea of space-time coding has been applied to wireless relay networks wherein a set of geographically separated relay nodes cooperate to process the received signal from the source and forward them to the destination such that the signal received at the destination appears like a Space-Time Block Code (STBC). Such STBCs (referred to as Distributed Space- Time Block Codes (DSTBCs)) when appropriately designed are known to offer spatial diversity. It is known that different classes of DSTBCs can be designed primarily depending on (i) whether the Amplify and Forward (AF) protocol or the Decode and Forward (DF) protocol is employed at the relays and (ii) whether the relay nodes are synchronized or not. In this paper, we present a survey on the problems and results associated with the design of DSTBCs for the following classes of two-hop wireless relay networks: (i) synchronous relay networks with AF protocols, (ii) asynchronous relay networks with AF protocols (iii) synchronous relay networks with DF protocols and (iv) asynchronous relay networks with DF protocols.

Performance of asynchronous two-relay two-hop wireless cooperative networks

In wireless cooperative networks, the asynchronism between the relays can be a source of diversity which is similar in its essence to the multipath diversity of frequency selective channels. In this context, an asynchronous two-relay cooperative wireless network is studied for Decode-and-Forward (DF) and Amplify-and-Forward (AF) protocols. The outage probability in the high Signal to Noise Ratio (SNR) regime is derived and the impact of the relative delay between the two relays on this outage probability is evaluated. It is shown that for a sufficiently high relative delay, the outage probability performance becomes independent from the relative delay and approaches from the synchronous protocol performance. Besides, an optimization of the power distribution between the transmitting nodes of the network is carried out in the high SNR regime based on the outage probability minimization. Moreover, the Diversity Multiplexing Tradeoff (DMT) of the network is characterized for the two cooperative protocols DF and AF. The DMT curve does not depend on the relative delay as long as the latter is non-zero.

Wireless network coding in slotted aloha with two-hop unbalanced traffic

This paper deals with two representative unbalanced traffic cases for two-hop wireless relay access systems employing network coding and a slotted ALOHA protocol. Network coding is a recent and highly regarded technology for capacity enhancement with multiple unicast and multisource multicast networks. We have analyzed the performance of network coding on a two-hop wireless relay access system employing the slotted ALOHA under a balanced bidirectional traffic. The relay nodes will generally undergo this unbalanced multidirectional traffic but the impact of this unbalanced traffic on network coding has not been analyzed. This paper provides closed-form expressions for the throughput and packet delay for two-hop unbalanced bidirectional traffic cases both with and without network coding even if the buffers on nodes are unsaturated. The analytical results are mainly derived by solving queueing systems for the buffer behavior at the relay node. The results show that the transmission probability of the relay node is a design parameter that is crucial to maximizing the achievable throughput of wireless network coding in slotted ALOHA on two-hop unbalanced traffic cases. Furthermore, we show that the throughput is enhanced even if the traffic at the relay node is unbalanced.

Impact of CSI on distributed space-time coding in wireless relay networks

We consider a two-hop wireless network where a transmitter communicates with a receiver via M relays with an amplify-and-forward (AF) protocol. Recent works have shown that the sophisticated linear processing such as beamforming and distributed space-time coding (DSTC) at relays enables to improve the AF performance. However, the relative utility of these strategies depends on the available channel state information at transmitter (CSIT), which in turn depends on the system parameters such as the speed of the underlying fading channel and that of training and feedback procedures. Moreover, it is of practical interest to have a single transmit scheme that handles different CSIT scenarios. This motivates us to consider a unified approach based on DSTC that potentially provides diversity gain with statistical CSIT and exploits some additional side information if available. Under individual power constraints at the relays, we optimize the amplifier power allocation such that pairwise error probability conditioned on the available CSIT is minimized. Under perfect CSIT, we propose an on-off gradient algorithm that efficiently finds a set of relays to switch on. Under partial and statistical CSIT, we propose a simple waterfilling algorithm that yields a non-trivial solution between maximum power allocation and a generalized STC that equalizes the averaged amplified noise for all relays. Moreover, we derive the closed-form solutions for M = 2 and in certain asymptotic regimes that enable an easy interpretation of the proposed algorithms. It is found that an appropriate amplifier power allocation is mandatory for DSTC to offer sufficient diversity and power gain in a general network topology.

Relay Subset Selection in Wireless Networks Using Partial Decode-and-Forward Transmission

This paper considers the problem of selecting a subset of nodes in a two-hop wireless network to act as relays in aiding the communication between the source-destination pair. Optimal relay subset selection with the objective of maximizing the overall throughput is a difficult problem that depends on multiple factors, including node locations, queue lengths, and power consumption. A partial decode-and-forward strategy is applied in this paper to improve the tractability of the relay selection problem and the performance of the overall network. Note that the number of relays that are selected ultimately determines the performance of the network. This paper benchmarks this performance by determining the net diversity that is achieved using the relays that are selected and the partial decode-and-forward strategy. This framework is subsequently used to further transform relay selection into a simpler relay placement problem, and two proximity-based approximation algorithms are developed to determine the appropriate set of relays to be selected in the network. Other selection strategies, such as random relay selection and a greedy algorithm that relies on channel state information, are also presented. This paper concludes by showing that the proposed proximity-based relay selection strategies yield near-optimal expected rates for a small number of selected relays.

Cooperative relaying in multi-antenna fixed relay networks

Space, cost, and signal processing constraints, among others, often preclude the use of multiple antennas at wireless terminals. This paper investigates distributed decode-and-forward fixed relays (infrastructure-based relaying) which are engaged in cooperation in a two-hop wireless network as a means of removing the burden of multiple antennas on wireless terminals. In contrast to mobile terminals, the deployment of a small number of antennas on infrastructure-based fixed relays is feasible, thus, the paper examines the impact of multiple antennas on the performance of the distributed cooperative fixed relays. Threshold-based maximal ratio combining (MRC) and threshold-based selection combining (SC) of these multiple antenna signals are studied and analyzed. It is found that the end-to-end (E2E) error performance of a network which has few relays with many antennas is not significantly worse than that which has many relays each with a fewer antennas. Obviously, the former network has a tremendous deployment cost advantage over the latter. It is also observed that the E2E error performance of a network in which the multiple antennas at relays are configured in SC fashion is not significantly worse than that in which MRC is used. For implementation, SC presents a significantly lower complexity and cost than a full-blown MRC. The analysis in this paper uses the versatile Nakagami fading channels in contrast to the Rayleigh model used in most previous works

End-to-end QoS provisioning in 4G with mobile hotspots

The novel concept of mobile hotspots, characterized by a group of wireless users equipped with wireless LAN cards, moving as a whole and requiring Internet connectivity, is gaining the interest of the telecommunications research community. This article intends to contribute to this research topic by proposing alternative solutions for the deployment of a mobile gateway device offering 3G connectivity to the group of WLAN users while they are moving. This is a decisive aspect of the 3G migration to 4G networks. The proposed solutions allow for two-hop wireless paths between WLAN and 3G systems, and performing control over-high layer issues, specifically focusing on end-to-end QoS provisioning. The pros and cons of envisaged design solutions are addressed and their relevance justified considering purposes, target users, and applications.