On Maximizing Coverage in Gaussian Relay Networks

Results for Gaussian relay channels typically focus on maximizing transmission rates for given locations of the source, relay and destination. We consider an alternative approach, focusing on maximizing coverage for a given rate. This novel perspective enables treatment of the relay location as a design parameter, producing an extra degree of freedom that may be optimized. Focusing on coverage, we evaluate existing approaches, like decode and forward (DF), compress and forward (CF) and compare them with upper bounds. In the process, we obtain some surprising insights on the performance of these approaches.