An Uplink Cooperative Relaying Scheme for Cellular Networks

For traditional relaying schemes in cellular networks, the relay stations (RSs) are typically designed for helping either out-of-cell mobile stations (MSs) or intra-cell MSs, depending on whether there exists a direct link between the base station (BS) and MS. In this paper, an uplink (UL) cooperative relaying scheme is proposed, which enables the RSs designed for out-of-cell MSs to help UL communications of intra-cell MSs. A message exchange protocol is provided for the relaying scheme to allow practical network implementations. In particular, two important issues are addressed: efficiency and fairness. For the efficiency issue, a practical power allocation algorithm is proposed for power-efficient cooperation. For the fairness issue, a reward scheme is proposed so that the helping RSs will be compensated.