Energy-Efficient Cooperative Relaying in Heterogeneous Radio Access Networks

Recently, much attention has been given to heterogeneous networks where a mobile device is capable of accessing multiple random access networks (RANs), where each RAN operates on a different carrier frequency with a different transmission bandwidth, using multi-radio platforms embedded in the device. In this letter, we investigate the efficient use of multiple radio access technologies (RATs) to improve the energy efficiency in cooperative networks. Considering the circuit power consumption of each RAT, we study energy-efficient best-select relaying and show that the proposed scheme significantly outperforms traditional best-select relaying as well as direct communications.