Abstract—We develop and analyze low-complexity cooperative diversity protocols that combat fading induced by multipath propagation in wireless networks. The underlying techniques exploit space diversity available through cooperating terminals’ relaying signals for one another. We outline several strategies employed by the cooperating radios, including fixed relaying schemes such as amplify-and-forward and decode-and-forward, selection relaying schemes that adapt based upon channel measurements between the cooperating terminals, and incremental relaying schemes that adapt based upon limited feedback from the destination terminal. We develop performance characterizations in terms of outage events and associated outage probabilities, which measure robustness of the transmissions to fading, focusing on the high signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) regime. Except for fixed decode-and-forward, all of our cooperative diversity protocols are efficient in the sense that they achieve full diversity (i.e., second-order diversity in the case of two terminals), and, moreover, are close to optimum (within 1.5 dB) in certain regimes. Thus, using distributed antennas, we can provide the powerful benefits of space diversity without need for physical arrays, though at a loss of spectral efficiency due to half-duplex operation and possibly at the cost of additional receive hardware. Applicable to any wireless setting, including cellular or ad hoc networks—wherever space constraints preclude the use of physical arrays—the performance characterizations reveal that large power or energy savings result from the use of these protocols. Index Terms—Diversity techniques, fading channels, outage probability, relay channel, user cooperation, wireless networks. I.

Abstract—We take a new look at the issue of network capacity. It is shown that network coding is an essential ingredient in achieving the capacity of a network. Building on recent work by Li et al., who examined the network capacity of multicast networks, we extend the network coding framework to arbitrary networks and robust networking. For networks which are restricted to using linear network codes, we find necessary and sufficient conditions for the feasibility of any given set of connections over a given network. We also consider the problem of network recovery for nonergodic link failures. For the multicast setup we prove that there exist coding strategies that provide maximally robust networks and that do not require adaptation of the network interior to the failure pattern in question. The results are derived for both delay-free networks and networks with delays. Index Terms—Algebraic coding, network information theory, network robustness. I.

How much information can be carried over a wireless network with a multiplicity of nodes? What are the optimal strategies for information transmission and cooperation among the nodes? We obtain sharp information theoretic scaling laws under some conditions.

Abstract—We develop and analyze space–time coded cooperative diversity protocols for combating multipath fading across multiple protocol layers in a wireless network. The protocols exploit spatial diversity available among a collection of distributed terminals that relay messages for one another in such a manner that the destination terminal can average the fading, even though it is unknown a priori which terminals will be involved. In particular, a source initiates transmission to its destination, and many relays potentially receive the transmission. Those terminals that can fully decode the transmission utilize a space-time code to cooperatively relay to the destination. We demonstrate that these protocols achieve full spatial diversity in the number of cooperating terminals, not just the number of decoding relays, and can be used effectively for higher spectral efficiencies than repetition-based schemes. We discuss issues related to space–time code design for these protocols, emphasizing codes that readily allow for appealing distributed versions. Index Terms—Diversity techniques, fading channels, outage probability, relay channel, user cooperation, wireless networks. I.

In [1], Gupta and Kumar determined the capacity of wireless networks under certain assumptions, among them point-to-point coding, which excludes for example multi-access and broadcast codes. In this paper, we consider essentially the same physical model of a wireless network under a different traffic pattern, namely the relay traffic pattern, but we allow for arbitrarily complex network coding. In our model, there is only one active source/destination pair, while all other nodes assist this transmission. We show code constructions leading to achievable rates and derive upper bounds from the max-flow min-cut theorem. It is shown that lower and upper bounds meet asymptotically as the number of nodes in the network goes to infinity, thus proving that the capacity of the wireless network with n nodes under the relay traffic pattern behaves like log n bits per second. This demonstrates also that network coding is essential: under the point-topoint coding assumption considered in [1], the achievable rate is constant, independent of the number of nodes.

Cooperative diversity is a transmission technique where multiple terminals pool their resources to form a virtual antenna array that realizes spatial diversity gain in a distributed fashion. In this paper, we examine the basic building block of cooperative diversity systems, a simple fading relay channel where the source, destination and relay terminals are each equipped with single antenna transceivers. We consider three different TDMA-based cooperative protocols that vary the degree of broadcasting and receive collision. The relay terminal operates in either the amplify-and-forward (AF) or decode-and-forward (DF) modes. For each protocol, we study the ergodic and outage capacity behavior (assuming Gaussian code books) under the AF and DF modes of relaying. We analyze the spatial diversity performance of the various protocols and find that full spatial diversity (second-order in this case) is achieved by certain protocols provided that appropriate power control is employed. Our analysis unifies previous results reported in the literature and establishes the superiority (both from a capacity as well as a diversity point-of-view) of a new protocol proposed in this paper. The second part of the paper is devoted to (distributed) space-time code design for fading relay channels operating in the AF mode. We show that the corresponding code design criteria consist of the traditional rank and determinant criteria for the case of co-located antennas as well as appropriate power control rules. Consequently space-time codes designed for the case of co-located multi-antenna channels can be used to realize cooperative diversity provided that appropriate power control is employed.

Abstract—Mobile users ’ data rate and quality of service are limited by the fact that, within the duration of any given call, they experience severe variations in signal attenuation, thereby necessitating the use of some type of diversity. In this two-part paper, we propose a new form of spatial diversity, in which diversity gains are achieved via the cooperation of mobile users. Part I describes the user cooperation strategy, while Part II focuses on implementation issues and performance analysis. Results show that, even though the interuser channel is noisy, cooperation leads not only to an increase in capacity for both users but also to a more robust system, where users ’ achievable rates are less susceptible to channel variations. Index Terms—Code-division multiple access (CDMA), diversity, fading, information rates, multiuser channels. I.

Abstract — We study communication networks of arbitrary size and topology and communicating over a general vector discrete memoryless channel. We propose an information-theoretic constructive scheme for obtaining an achievable rate region in such networks. Many well-known capacity-defining achievable rate regions can be derived as special cases of the proposed scheme. A few such examples are the physically degraded and reverselydegraded relay channels, the Gaussian multiple-access channel, and the Gaussian broadcast channel. The proposed scheme also leads to inner bounds for the multicast and allcast capacities. Applying the proposed scheme to a specific wireless network   of nodes located in a region of unit area, we show that a transport capacity of ¡£ ¢ bit-meters/sec is feasible in a certain family of networks, as compared to the best possible transport capacity ¡£¢§ ¦   ¨ ¤ of bit-meters/sec in [16] where the receiver capabilities were limited. Even though the improvement is shown for a specific class of networks, a clear implication is that designing and employing more sophisticated multi-user coding schemes can provide sizable gains in at least some large wireless networks. Index Terms — Discrete memoryless channels, Gaussian channels, multiuser communications, network information theory,

Abstract — We develop and analyze space-time coded cooperative diversity protocols for combating multipath fading across multiple protocol layers in a wireless network. The protocols exploit spatial diversity available among a collection of distributed terminals that relay messages for one another in such a manner that the destination terminal can average the fading, even though it is unknown a priori which terminals will be involved. In particular, a source initiates transmission to its destination, and many relays potentially receive the transmission. Those terminals that can fully decode the transmission utilize a space-time code to cooperatively relay to the destination. We demonstrate that these protocols achieve full spatial diversity in the number of cooperating terminals, not just the number of decoding relays, and can be used effectively for higher spectral efficiencies than repetitionbased schemes. We discuss issues related to space-time code design for these protocols, emphasizing codes that readily allow for appealing distributed versions. I.

We propose novel cooperative transmission protocols for delay-limited coherent fading channels consisting of (half-duplex and single-antenna) partners and one cell site. In our work, we differentiate between the relay, cooperative broadcast (down-link), and cooperative multiple-access (CMA) (up-link) channels. The proposed protocols are evaluated using Zheng–Tse diversity–multiplexing tradeoff. For the relay channel, we investigate two classes of cooperation schemes; namely, amplify and forward (AF) protocols and decode and forward (DF) protocols. For the first class, we establish an upper bound on the achievable diversity–multiplexing tradeoff with a single relay. We then construct a new AF protocol that achieves this upper bound. The proposed algorithm is then extended to the general case with relays where it is shown to outperform the space–time coded protocol of Laneman and Wornell without requiring decoding/encoding at the relays. For the class of DF protocols, we develop a dynamic decode and forward (DDF) protocol that achieves the optimal tradeoff for multiplexing gains. Furthermore, with a single relay, the DDF protocol is shown to dominate the class of AF protocols for all multiplexing gains. The superiority of the DDF protocol is shown to be more significant in the cooperative broadcast channel. The situation is reversed in the CMA channel where we propose a new AF protocol that achieves the optimal tradeoff for all multiplexing gains. A distinguishing feature of the proposed protocols in the three scenarios is that they do not rely on orthogonal subspaces, allowing for a more efficient use of resources. In fact, using our results one can argue that the suboptimality of previously proposed protocols stems from their use of orthogonal subspaces rather than the half-duplex constraint.