Relaying Strategies and Protocols for Efficient Wireless Networks

Abstract

Next generation wireless networks are expected to provide high data rate and satisfy the Quality-of-Service (QoS) constraints of the users. A significant component of achieving these goals is to increase the effi ciency of wireless networks by either optimizing current architectures or exploring new technologies which achieve that. The latter includes revisiting technologies which were previously proposed, but due to a multitude of reasons were ignored at that time. One such technology is relaying which was initially proposed in the latter half of the 1960s and then was revived in the early 2000s. In this dissertation, we study relaying in conjunction with resource allocation to increase the effi ciency of wireless networks. In this regard, we differentiate between conventional relaying and relaying with buffers. Conventional relaying is traditional relaying where the relay forwards the signal it received immediately. On the other hand, in relaying with buffers or buffer-aided relaying as it is called, the relay can store received data in its buffer and forward it later on. This gives the benefit of taking advantage of good channel conditions as the relay can only transmit when the channel conditions are good. The dissertation starts with conventional relaying and considers the problem of minimizing the total consumed power while maintaining system QoS. After upper bounding the system performance, more practical algorithms which require reduced feedback overhead are explored. Buffer-aided relaying is then considered and the joint user-and-hop scheduler is introduced which exploits multi-user diversity (MUD) and 5 multi-hop diversity (MHD) gains together in dual-hop broadcast channels. Next joint user-and-hop scheduling is extended to the shared relay channel where two source-destination pairs share a single relay. The benefits of buffer-aided relaying in the bidirectional relay channel utilizing network coding are then explored. Finally, a new transmission protocol for overlay cognitive radios is derived. This protocol utilizes relays with buffers, requires only causal knowledge of the primary's message at the secondary and incentivizes the primary to cooperate with the secondary and share its codebook.

Date of Award	Oct 2014
Original language	English (US)
Awarding Institution	Computer, Electrical and Mathematical Sciences and Engineering
Supervisor	Mohamed-Slim Alouini (Supervisor)