Synergetic cooperation in a distributed base station system

Cooperation in wireless communications is an attractive means to gain spectral efficiency or diversity. Typically, cooperation is studied at the level of an individual end-to-end link. On the other hand, the primary goal of the the protocol proposed herein is not the improvement of individual link quality, but rather to improve global resource utilization throughout the network in the context of a distributed base station system. A simple Alamouti-type cooperative protocol for mobiles with half-duplex air interfaces is presented. The effect of cooperation on the overall network in terms of resource availability, connection capacity, and offered quality of service is studied via emulation of an agent-system organizing the distributed base station model. Despite the limitations of the simplistic cooperation protocol used, it is shown that cooperation yields improved performance through synergistic effects at the system level.