A Multichannel Cooperative Scheme for Wireless Networks and Performance Characterization

A cooperative random access protocol, namely ALLIANCES, was recently proposed for resolving collisions in wireless networks. In (Dong, L, et al., 2006), we proposed an multichannel extension of ALLIANCES that in addition to cooperation diversity can exploit multipath diversity, and thus improve throughput at high traffic load and reduce packet delays. In this paper, we propose an improvement on (Dong, L, et al., 2006) that makes more efficient use of available bandwidth and thus can achieve high throughput at all traffic loads. Furthermore, we present analytic performance characterization that provides insight on the relationship between achievable diversity and parameters like collision order, number of relays, channel length and number of carriers per subchannel.