Performance of Cooperative Ad-Hoc Networks in Rayleigh Fading Channels

Cooperative diversity is proposed to combat the detrimental effects of channel fading. In this paper, we investigate the effectiveness of cooperative diversity in interference limited ad hoc networks. The throughput performance of ad hoc networks that employ cooperative diversity techniques is examined. The negative effects of relay transmission blocking and extra time delay due to using the relay node, on the network throughput are investigated. We show that the relay blocking problem is mainly dependent on the relay selection criterion. Furthermore, we examine a two-channel approach to solve the delay problem and hence improve the overall network throughput.