Asymmetric resource allocation for OFDMA networks with collaborative relays

This work addresses the radio resource allocation problem for cooperative relay assisted OFDMA wireless network. The relays adopt the decode-and-forward protocol and can cooperatively assist the transmission from source to destination. Recent works on the subject have mainly considered symmetric source-to-relay and relay-to-destination resource allocations, which limits the achievable gains through relaying. In this paper we consider the problem of asymmetric radio resource allocation, where the objective is to maximize the system throughput of the source-to-destination link under various constraints. In particular, we consider optimization of the set of cooperative relays and link asymmetries together with subcarrier and power allocations. We derive theoretical expressions for the solutions and illustrate them through simulations. The results validate clearly the additional performance gains through asymmetric cooperative scheme compared to the other recently proposed resource allocation schemes.