Maximizing Expected Achievable Rates for Block-Fading Buffer-Aided Relay Channels

© 2002-2012 IEEE. In this paper, the long-term average achievable rate over block-fading buffer-aided relay channels is maximized using a hybrid scheme that combines three essential transmission strategies, which are decode-and-forward, compress-and-forward, and direct transmission. The proposed hybrid scheme is dynamically adapted based on the channel state information. The integration and optimization of these three strategies provide a more generic and fundamental solution and give better achievable rates than the known schemes in the literature. Despite the large number of optimization variables, the proposed hybrid scheme can be optimized using simple closed-form formulas that are easy to apply in practical relay systems. This includes adjusting the transmission rate and compression when compress-and-forward is the selected strategy based on the channel conditions. Furthermore, in this paper, the hybrid scheme is applied to three different models of the Gaussian block-fading buffer-aided relay channels, depending on whether the relay is half or full duplex and whether the source and the relay have orthogonal or non-orthogonal channel access. Several numerical examples are provided to demonstrate the achievable rate results and compare them to the upper bounds of the ergodic capacity for each one of the three channel models under consideration

Adaptive Mode Selection and Power Allocation in Bidirectional Buffer-aided Relay Networks

In this paper, we consider the problem of sum rate maximization in a bidirectional relay network with fading. Hereby, user 1 and user 2 communicate with each other only through a relay, i.e., a direct link between user 1 and user 2 is not present. In this network, there exist six possible transmission modes: four point-to-point modes (user 1-to-relay, user 2-to-relay, relay-to-user 1, relay-to-user 2), a multiple access mode (both users to the relay), and a broadcast mode (the relay to both users). Most existing protocols assume a fixed schedule of using a subset of the aforementioned transmission modes, as a result, the sum rate is limited by the capacity of the weakest link associated with the relay in each time slot. Motivated by this limitation, we develop a protocol which is not restricted to adhere to a predefined schedule for using the transmission modes. Therefore, all transmission modes of the bidirectional relay network can be used adaptively based on the instantaneous channel state information (CSI) of the involved links. To this end, the relay has to be equipped with two buffers for the storage of the information received from users 1 and 2, respectively. For the considered network, given a total average power budget for all nodes, we jointly optimize the transmission mode selection and power allocation based on the instantaneous CSI in each time slot for sum rate maximization. Simulation results show that the proposed protocol outperforms existing protocols for all signal-to-noise ratios (SNRs). Specifically, we obtain a considerable gain at low SNRs due to the adaptive power allocation and at high SNRs due to the adaptive mode selection.Comment: arXiv admin note: substantial text overlap with arXiv:1303.373

Buffer-Aided Relaying with Adaptive Link Selection - Fixed and Mixed Rate Transmission

We consider a simple network consisting of a source, a half-duplex DF relay with a buffer, and a destination. We assume that the direct source-destination link is not available and all links undergo fading. We propose two new buffer-aided relaying schemes. In the first scheme, neither the source nor the relay have CSIT, and consequently, both nodes are forced to transmit with fixed rates. In contrast, in the second scheme, the source does not have CSIT and transmits with fixed rate but the relay has CSIT and adapts its transmission rate accordingly. In the absence of delay constraints, for both fixed rate and mixed rate transmission, we derive the throughput-optimal buffer-aided relaying protocols which select either the source or the relay for transmission based on the instantaneous SNRs of the source-relay and the relay-destination links. In addition, for the delay constrained case, we develop buffer-aided relaying protocols that achieve a predefined average delay. Compared to conventional relaying protocols, which select the transmitting node according to a predefined schedule independent of the link instantaneous SNRs, the proposed buffer-aided protocols with adaptive link selection achieve large performance gains. In particular, for fixed rate transmission, we show that the proposed protocol achieves a diversity gain of two as long as an average delay of more than three time slots can be afforded. Furthermore, for mixed rate transmission with an average delay of $E{T}$ time slots, a multiplexing gain of $r=1-1/(2E{T})$ is achieved. Hence, for mixed rate transmission, for sufficiently large average delays, buffer-aided half-duplex relaying with and without adaptive link selection does not suffer from a multiplexing gain loss compared to full-duplex relaying.Comment: IEEE Transactions on Information Theory. (Published