Combining Cooperative Diversity and Multiuser Diversity: A Fair Scheduling Scheme for Multi-Source Multi-Relay Networks

In this letter, we propose a round-robin (RR) based fair scheduling scheme (RRFS) to achieve both cooperative diversity (CD) and multiuser diversity (MUD) in multi-source, multi-relay amplify-and-forward (AF) cooperative networks. Different from traditional schemes in multiuser scenarios which only allow the "best" source to transmit and cause transmission unfairness, all the sources transmit in a RR fashion first in RRFS. In order to achieve both kinds of diversity in the relay phase, we then exploit a joint source-relay selection strategy which selects the "best" relay to help the "worst" source\´s transmission in each relay time slot. Therefore, RRFS brings MUD benefit to cooperation communication systems while maintaining transmission fairness.