Adaptive cooperative coding with power allocation in wireless relay networks

Cooperative relay is an effective means to improve spectral efficiency in wireless networks. In this paper, we propose a cooperative relay network protocol based on adaptive cooperative coding (ACC), in which the level of cooperation (LoC) is made adaptive to follow the variation of channel propagation conditions. We derive the strict performance upper bound and asymptotic bound expressions for the ACC protocol. Moreover, we develop a sub-optimal power allocation algorithm based on the derived asymptotic bound to further improve the performance of the ACC protocol. The optimization is achieved in two scenarios based on different link channel qualities. The cooperative diversity gain and power allocation gain of the ACC protocol are evaluated and their numerical results are provided.