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

Buffer-Aided Relaying with Adaptive Link Selection

In this paper, we consider a simple network consisting of a source, a half-duplex decode-and-forward relay, and a destination. We propose a new relaying protocol employing adaptive link selection, i.e., in any given time slot, based on the channel state information of the source-relay and the relay-destination link a decision is made whether the source or the relay transmits. In order to avoid data loss at the relay, adaptive link selection requires the relay to be equipped with a buffer such that data can be queued until the relay-destination link is selected for transmission. We study both delay constrained and delay unconstrained transmission. For the delay unconstrained case, we characterize the optimal link selection policy, derive the corresponding throughput, and develop an optimal power allocation scheme. For the delay constrained case, we propose to starve the buffer of the relay by choosing the decision threshold of the link selection policy smaller than the optimal one and derive a corresponding upper bound on the average delay. Furthermore, we propose a modified link selection protocol which avoids buffer overflow by limiting the queue size. Our analytical and numerical results show that buffer-aided relaying with adaptive link selection achieves significant throughput gains compared to conventional relaying protocols with and without buffers where the relay employs a fixed schedule for reception and transmission.Comment: IEEE Journal on Selected Areas in Communications; Special Issue on Theories and Methods for Advanced Wireless Relay

Opportunistic Relaying in Wireless Networks

Relay networks having $n$ source-to-destination pairs and $m$ half-duplex relays, all operating in the same frequency band in the presence of block fading, are analyzed. This setup has attracted significant attention and several relaying protocols have been reported in the literature. However, most of the proposed solutions require either centrally coordinated scheduling or detailed channel state information (CSI) at the transmitter side. Here, an opportunistic relaying scheme is proposed, which alleviates these limitations. The scheme entails a two-hop communication protocol, in which sources communicate with destinations only through half-duplex relays. The key idea is to schedule at each hop only a subset of nodes that can benefit from \emph{multiuser diversity}. To select the source and destination nodes for each hop, it requires only CSI at receivers (relays for the first hop, and destination nodes for the second hop) and an integer-value CSI feedback to the transmitters. For the case when $n$ is large and $m$ is fixed, it is shown that the proposed scheme achieves a system throughput of $m/2$ bits/s/Hz. In contrast, the information-theoretic upper bound of $(m/2)\log \log n$ bits/s/Hz is achievable only with more demanding CSI assumptions and cooperation between the relays. Furthermore, it is shown that, under the condition that the product of block duration and system bandwidth scales faster than $\log n$, the achievable throughput of the proposed scheme scales as $\Theta ({\log n})$. Notably, this is proven to be the optimal throughput scaling even if centralized scheduling is allowed, thus proving the optimality of the proposed scheme in the scaling law sense.Comment: 17 pages, 8 figures, To appear in IEEE Transactions on Information Theor

Principles of Physical Layer Security in Multiuser Wireless Networks: A Survey

This paper provides a comprehensive review of the domain of physical layer security in multiuser wireless networks. The essential premise of physical-layer security is to enable the exchange of confidential messages over a wireless medium in the presence of unauthorized eavesdroppers without relying on higher-layer encryption. This can be achieved primarily in two ways: without the need for a secret key by intelligently designing transmit coding strategies, or by exploiting the wireless communication medium to develop secret keys over public channels. The survey begins with an overview of the foundations dating back to the pioneering work of Shannon and Wyner on information-theoretic security. We then describe the evolution of secure transmission strategies from point-to-point channels to multiple-antenna systems, followed by generalizations to multiuser broadcast, multiple-access, interference, and relay networks. Secret-key generation and establishment protocols based on physical layer mechanisms are subsequently covered. Approaches for secrecy based on channel coding design are then examined, along with a description of inter-disciplinary approaches based on game theory and stochastic geometry. The associated problem of physical-layer message authentication is also introduced briefly. The survey concludes with observations on potential research directions in this area.Comment: 23 pages, 10 figures, 303 refs. arXiv admin note: text overlap with arXiv:1303.1609 by other authors. IEEE Communications Surveys and Tutorials, 201

Performance of virtual full-duplex relaying on cooperative multi-path relay channels

We consider a cooperative multi-path relay channel (MPRC) where multiple half-duplex relays assist in the packet transmissions from a source to its destination. A virtual full-duplex (FD) relaying scheme is proposed that allows the source to transmit a new packet simultaneously with the selected best relay, with the rest of the relays attempting to decode this new packet. Thus, a new source packet can be served in each time slot, as in FD relay systems. Taking into account the effect of inter-relay interference (IRI) that is caused by simultaneous relay and source transmissions, a Markov chain analytical model is used to characterize the decoding performance at the relays, based on which the overall outage probability of MPRC is obtained in closed-form expressions. The asymptotic performance analysis reveals that in low rate scenarios, a close-to-full diversity order is achieved by the proposed scheme while substantially improving the spectrum efficiency. In high rate scenarios, the decoding performance of relays is limited by IRI and the system outage performance experiences an error floor. Simulation results demonstrate the performance gains of the proposed scheme by comparisons with existing half-duplex and FD relay systems in the literature

Full-duplex wireless communications: challenges, solutions and future research directions

The family of conventional half-duplex (HD) wireless systems relied on transmitting and receiving in different time-slots or frequency sub-bands. Hence the wireless research community aspires to conceive full-duplex (FD) operation for supporting concurrent transmission and reception in a single time/frequency channel, which would improve the attainable spectral efficiency by a factor of two. The main challenge encountered in implementing an FD wireless device is the large power difference between the self-interference (SI) imposed by the device’s own transmissions and the signal of interest received from a remote source. In this survey, we present a comprehensive list of the potential FD techniques and highlight their pros and cons. We classify the SI cancellation techniques into three categories, namely passive suppression, analog cancellation and digital cancellation, with the advantages and disadvantages of each technique compared. Specifically, we analyse the main impairments (e.g. phase noise, power amplifier nonlinearity as well as in-phase and quadrature-phase (I/Q) imbalance, etc.) that degrading the SI cancellation. We then discuss the FD based Media Access Control (MAC)-layer protocol design for the sake of addressing some of the critical issues, such as the problem of hidden terminals, the resultant end-to-end delay and the high packet loss ratio (PLR) due to network congestion. After elaborating on a variety of physical/MAC-layer techniques, we discuss potential solutions conceived for meeting the challenges imposed by the aforementioned techniques. Furthermore, we also discuss a range of critical issues related to the implementation, performance enhancement and optimization of FD systems, including important topics such as hybrid FD/HD scheme, optimal relay selection and optimal power allocation, etc. Finally, a variety of new directions and open problems associated with FD technology are pointed out. Our hope is that this treatise will stimulate future research efforts in the emerging field of FD communication