Cooperative relaying in user-centric networking under interference conditions

An ever-growing demand for pervasive Internet access has boosted the deployment of wireless local networks in recent decades. Nevertheless, wireless technologies face performance limitations due to unstable propagation conditions and mobility of devices. In face of multi-path propagation and low-data-rate stations, cooperative relaying promises gains in performance and reliability. However, cooperation procedures are unstable, due to their dependence on current channel conditions, and introduce overhead that can endanger performance, especially when nodes are mobile. This article presents an introduction to cooperative relaying, and describes a novel link layer protocol, called RelaySpot, able to implement cooperative relaying in dynamic networks, based on opportunistic relay selection, cooperative relay scheduling, and switching.