System Level Performance Evaluation of Client Cooperation in Wireless Cellular Networks

Abstract

Growing demand for bandwidth dictates the use of smaller wireless cells, which results in increased inter-cell interference. In most contemporary cellular systems, the clients at the cell edge typically have the worst chance of successful uplink transmission due to interference from the neighboring cells using the same frequency. Cooperative communications are believed to be a promising technique to enhance the performance of cell-edge users by allowing them to exploit other users as relay nodes and thus improve their throughput by reducing the number of retransmissions.

This thesis presents in-depth system-level evaluation of client relay technique in state-of-the-art wireless cellular networks (IEEE 802.16, LTE release 10). Several important scenarios are considered, including opportunistic client relay behavior and various network layouts.

It is demonstrated that client cooperation may considerably improve system performance in terms of cell-edge user performance for the cost of some increase in energy consumption of cell-center user. /Kir11