STiCMAC: A MAC Protocol for Robust Space-Time Coding in Cooperative Wireless LANs

Relay-assisted cooperative wireless communication has been shown to have significant performance gains over the legacy direct transmission scheme. Compared with single relay based cooperation schemes, utilizing multiple relays further improves the reliability and rate of transmissions. Distributed space-time coding (DSTC), as one of the schemes to utilize multiple relays, requires tight coordination between relays and does not perform well in a distributed environment with mobility. In this paper, a cooperative medium access control (MAC) layer protocol, called \emph{STiCMAC}, is designed to allow multiple relays to transmit at the same time in an IEEE 802.11 network. The transmission is based on a novel DSTC scheme called \emph{randomized distributed space-time coding} (\emph{R-DSTC}), which requires minimum coordination. Unlike conventional cooperation schemes that pick nodes with good links, \emph{STiCMAC} picks a \emph{transmission mode} that could most improve the end-to-end data rate. Any station that correctly receives from the source can act as a relay and participate in forwarding. The MAC protocol is implemented in a fully decentralized manner and is able to opportunistically recruit relays on the fly, thus making it \emph{robust} to channel variations and user mobility. Simulation results show that the network capacity and delay performance are greatly improved, especially in a mobile environment.Comment: This paper is a revised version of a paper with the same name submitted to IEEE Transaction on Wireless Communications. STiCMAC protocol with RTS/CTS turned off is presented in the appendix of this draf

Cooperative medium access control based on spectrum leasing

Based on cooperative spectrum leasing, a distributed “win–win” (WW) cooperative framework is designed to encourage the licensed source node (SN) to lease some part of its spectral resources to the unlicensed relay node (RN) for the sake of simultaneously improving the SN’s achievable rate and for reducing the energy consumption (EC). The potential candidate RNs carry out autonomous decisions concerning whether to contend for a cooperative transmission opportunity, which could dissipate some of their battery power, while conveying their traffic in light of their individual service requirements. Furthermore, a WW cooperative medium-access-control (MAC) protocol is designed to implement the proposed distributed WW cooperative framework. Simulation results demonstrate that our WW cooperative MAC protocol is capable of providing both substantial rate improvements and considerable energy savings for the cooperative spectrum leasing system