Abdulkareem Adinoyi

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

Threshold Selection for SNR-based Selective Digital Relaying in Cooperative Wireless Networks

This paper studies selective relaying schemes based on signal-to-noise-ratio (SNR) to minimize the end-to-end (e2e) bit error rate (BER) in cooperative digital relaying systems using BPSK modulation. In the SNR-based selective relaying, the relay either retransmits or remains silent depending on the SNRs of the source-relay, relay-destination, and source-destination links. Different models assuming the availability of different sets of instantaneous and average SNR information at the relay are studied. For each model, the optimal strategy to minimize the e2e BER is a different threshold rule on the source-relay SNR, if the link SNRs are uncorrelated in time and space. Approximations for the optimal threshold values that minimize the e2e BER and the resulting performance are derived analytically for BPSK modulation. Using the derived threshold the e2e BER can be reduced significantly compared to simple digital relaying. By studying the performance under different models, it is shown that knowledge of the instantaneous source-destination SNR at the relay can be exploited. The gain from this knowledge is higher when the average source-destination SNR is large. However, knowledge of the instantaneous relay-destination SNR at the relay does not change performance significantly.

An Overview of Radio Resource Management in Relay-Enhanced OFDMA-Based Networks

Researchers in both academia and industry have accepted OFDMA as the most appropriate air-interface for the emerging broadband wireless access networks and standards. A number of IEEE working groups and various research forums are focusing on developing relay and mesh-enabled networks with cooperative communication features. Among these research efforts are IEEE 802.11s, IEEE 802.16j/m, and 3GPPs advanced long term evolution (LTE-advanced). The combination of OFDMA with relaying techniques provides rich opportunities for cost-effective and high-performance networks. To exploit such opportunities requires intelligent radio resource management (RRM) algorithms. Although a number of publications have highlighted the important and challenging issues involved in designing RRM algorithms for OFDMA networks, only recently a number of papers have investigated relay-enhanced OFDMA-based multicellular networks. By and large, the literature indicates that these issues constitute a hot research topic that will continue to attract interest. This paper provides a survey of the current literature on OFDMA networks enhanced with decode-and-forward relaying and provides their link to earlier literature in non-OFDMA networks. In addition, a rich list of references is provided to direct the readers toward some of the emerging techniques.

Fairness-aware radio resource management in downlink OFDMA cellular relay networks

Relaying and orthogonal frequency division multiple access (OFDMA) are the accepted technologies for emerging wireless communications standards. The activities in many wireless standardization bodies and forums, for example IEEE 802.16 j/m and LTE-Advanced, attest to this fact. The availability or lack thereof of efficient radio resource management (RRM) could make or mar the opportunities in these networks. Although distributed schemes are more attractive, it is essential to seek outstanding performance benchmarks to which various decentralized schemes can be compared. Therefore, this paper provides a comprehensive centralized RRM algorithm for downlink OFDMA cellular fixed relay networks in a way to ensure user fairness with minimal impact on network throughput. In contrast, it has been observed that pure opportunistic schemes and fairness-aware schemes relying solely on achievable and allocated capacities may not attain the desired fairness, e.g., proportional fair scheduling. The proposed scheme is queue-aware and performs three functions jointly; dynamic routing, fair scheduling, and load balancing among cell nodes. We show that the proposed centralized scheme is different from the traditional centralized schemes in terms of the substantial savings in complexity and feedback overhead.

Opportunities and Challenges in OFDMA-Based Cellular Relay Networks: A Radio Resource Management Perspective

The opportunities and flexibility in relay networks and orthogonal frequency-division multiple access (OFDMA) make the combination a suitable candidate network and air-interface technology for providing reliable and ubiquitous high-data-rate coverage in next-generation cellular networks. Advanced and intelligent radio resource management (RRM) schemes are known to be crucial toward harnessing these opportunities in future OFDMA-based relay-enhanced cellular networks. However, it is not very clear how to address the new RRM challenges (such as enabling distributed algorithms, intra-cell/inter-cell routing, intense and dynamic co-channel interference (CCI), and feedback overhead) in such complex environments comprising a plethora of relay stations (RSs) of different functionalities and characteristics. Employment of conventional RRM schemes in such networks will highly be inefficient if not infeasible. The next-generation networks are required to meet the expectations of all wireless users, irrespective of their locations. High-data-rate connectivity, mobility, and reliability, among other features, are examples of these expectations. Therefore, fairness is a critical performance aspect that has to be taken into account in the design of prospective RRM schemes. This paper reviews some of the prominent challenges involved in migrating from the conventional cellular architecture to the relay-based type and discusses how intelligent RRM schemes can exploit the opportunities in relay-enhanced OFDMA-based cellular networks. We identify the role of multiantenna systems and explore the current approaches in literature to extend the conventional schedulers to next-generation relay networks. This paper also highlights the fairness aspect in such networks in the light of the recent literature, provides some example fairness metrics, and compares the performances of some representative algorithms.

Performance of selection relaying and cooperative diversity

In this paper, a two-hop cooperative multi-relay communication network is considered. Selection relaying schemes are attracting considerable attention due to their prudent bandwidth utilization and ability to provide full diversity. The recent developments in selection relaying (SR) have largely focused on information theoretic analyses such as outage performance. Some of these analyses are accurate only in high SNR regimes. This paper provides exact outage and capacity performance expressions for selection relaying and tight approximation over a sufficiently wide range of SNR regimes for selection cooperative relaying. The outage capacity for SR is also provided. The motivation for this work is that practical systems operate at far lower SNR values than those supported by the high SNR analysis. Therefore, designers should be able to evaluate system performance to a reasonable degree of accuracy over practical SNR values. Simulations are used to corroborate the analytical results and close agreement is observed.

Optimum Threshold for SNR-Based Selective Digital Relaying Schemes in Cooperative Wireless Networks

We study selective digital relaying schemes where the relay may choose to retransmit or to remain silent based on the qualities of the links between the source, relay and the destination. We first analyze a baseline scheme, called static relaying, where the relaying decisions are based only on the average signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) values of all the links. The second scheme, dynamic relaying, allows the relay to make decisions based on the instantaneous SNR of the source-relay link and average SNRs of the relay-destination and source-destination links. We show that, in dynamic relaying the optimal strategy to minimize the average end-to-end bit error rate is a threshold rule on the instantaneous SNR of the source-relay channel. In this case, the optimal threshold value is a function of average SNR of relay-destination and source-destination channels. We derive closed-form expressions for the optimal threshold and the bit error performance achieved by this threshold. We show that dynamic relaying can provide significant performance advantage over static relaying.

On the Performance of Selection Relaying

Interest in selection relaying is growing. The recent developments in this area have largely focused on information theoretic analyses such as outage performance. Some of these analyses are accurate only at high SNR regimes. In this paper error rate analyses that are sufficiently accurate over a wide range of SNR regimes are provided. The motivations for this work are that practical systems operate at far lower SNR values than those supported by the high SNR analysis. To enable designers to make informed decisions regarding network design and deployment, it is imperative that system performance is evaluated with a reasonable degree of accuracy over practical SNR regimes. Simulations have been used to corroborate the analytical results, as close agreement between the two is observed.

Fairness-Aware Joint Routing and Scheduling in OFDMA-Based Cellular Fixed Relay Networks

Relaying and orthogonal frequency division multiple access (OFDMA) are the accepted technologies for emerging wireless communications standards. The activities in many wireless standardization bodies and forums, for example IEEE 802.16 j/m and LTE-Advanced, attest to this fact. The availability or lack thereof of efficient radio resource management (RRM) could make or mar the opportunities in these networks. This paper therefore provides a comprehensive RRM algorithm for OFDMA-based multi-cellular fixed relay networks in a way to ensure fairness among users with minimal impact on the network throughput (in contrast, pure opportunistic RRM techniques always favor users with good channel conditions). Unlike the majority of works in the literature, our proposed scheme is queue-aware and jointly performs routing, fair scheduling, and load balancing among cell nodes. The routing strategy has inherent learning ability and it dynamically converges to better routes.

WLC41-3: On the Performance of Cooperative Wireless Fixed Relays in Asymmetric Channels

In many scenarios the commonly assumed symmetry in multiple relay channels is unrealistic. Therefore, this paper, through analytical and simulation efforts, investigates asymmetric relay deployment where the links of cooperating nodes to destination experience unequal signal strength. An analysis of the cooperative error rate at the destination node in such networks is presented. Using the derived expressions for the cooperative error, in conjunction with the approaches used in earlier works, the end-to-end (E2E) performance of a two- hop network can be obtained. Moreover, the derived expression represents, in certain scenarios, a tight bound for the E2E error rate of the two-hop network such as when relay adopts threshold decode-and-forward strategy and/or multi-antenna processing to improve the reliability of its detection.