A survey of capacity in cooperative relay networks

Cooperative relay communication techniques, which form the virtual MIMO systems through cooperation among different nodes, have been attracted more attentions. This paper provides an overview of state-of-the-art capacity for cooperative relay networks. Firstly, it introduces backgrounds, basic model and working mode of cooperative relay networks. Then, the capacity of amplify-and-forward (AF) dual-hop fading channel is summarized, and the two-way AF single-relay fading channel capacity and power allocation criterions are discussed. Finally, it states the main research results for the performance of the relay selection algorithms in the two-way multiple relay, and proposes the future research directions.