Performance Evaluation of Relay Deployment Strategies in Multi-Cell Single Frequency Networks

We investigate the impact of fixed relay station deployment in a single frequency network (SFN) using orthogonal frequency-division multiplexing (OFDM). We provide semi-analytical methods for relay-based SFN performance evaluation. Monte Carlo simulations are performed to provide numerical calculation of multi-cell network performance. The performance metric is the cumulative distribution function of the signal-to-interference-plus-noise-ratio (SINR) for different user positions in the network. Common relaying methods for two-hop amplify-and-forward (A&F) relay networks are evaluated. The impact on the SINR is compared for different relaying gains, locations and densities of relays, as well as different transmission protocols, such as full-duplex (FD) and half-duplex (HD). Overall, taking into account their different rates and physical layer performances, FD appears to outperform HD. In addition to showing the benefit of relay deployment for enhancing network performance, our simulations show that the fixed and variable gains perform equally well.