Cooperative Relaying Schemes for Narrow-Band Frequency Hopping Wireless Ad Hoc Networks

Cooperative relaying is a promising technique for improving the performance of weak communication links in wireless networks by exploiting spatial diversity induced by relay transmissions. This paper considers cooperative relaying schemes for a narrow- band frequency hopping system. A novel hybrid relaying scheme called opportunistic hybrid relaying, which is specifically designed for this system, is presented. Unlike most relaying schemes in the literature, opportunistic hybrid relaying uses bandwidth efficiently by allowing the relays to transmit in non-orthogonal channels without any considerable coordination overhead among the relays. A joint channel estimation and data detection scheme is considered to be used at the destination to combine relay signals. It is shown that this scheme compares favorably to similar relaying schemes in the literature in terms of average success rate.