A Cooperative Relay Method and Performance for Wireless Networks

In cooperative relay system, relay nodes forward traffic will cause an increase of network loads, which will affect the system throughput. However, most existing cooperative schemes do not consider the impact of the network loads. In this paper, we propose a novel cooperative relay method called Cooperative communication based on offered load (CCBOL) for wireless networks, in which the relay method is the IEEE 802.11 DCF (Distribution Coordination Function) scheme. In CCBOL, we introduce the offered load to analyze the throughput performance for the proposed cooperative relay system. We utilize throughput performance as a metric to decide whether cooperation is adopted. The analysis and simulation results show that CCBOL can significantly improve the throughput comparing with the existing direct communication under some offered load networks.