On Buffer-Aided Multiple-Access Relay Channel

The paper treats uplink scenario where M user equipments (UEs) send to a Base Station (BS), possibly via a common Relay Station (RS) that is equipped with a buffer. This is a multiple-access relay channel (MARC) aided by a buffer. We devise a protocol in which the transmission mode is selected adaptively, using the buffer at the RS in order to maximize the average system throughput. We consider the general case in which the RS and the BS can have limits on the maximal number of transmitters that can be received over the multiple access channel. In each slot there are three type possible actions: (A1) multiple UEs transmit at rates that enable BS to decode them (A2) multiple UEs transmit, the BS can only decode the messages partially, while the RS completely; (A3) RS forwards the side information to BS about the partially decoded messages, which are going to be combined and decoded entirely at the BS, while simultaneously a number of UEs sends new messages to the BS. The results show that the adaptive selection of direct and buffer-aided relay transmissions leads to significant average throughput gains.Comment: 13 pages, 3 figures, accepted to IEEE Communications letter

Decoupled Uplink and Downlink in a Wireless System with Buffer-Aided Relaying

The paper treats a multiuser relay scenario where multiple user equipments (UEs) have a two-way communication with a common Base Station (BS) in the presence of a buffer-equipped Relay Station (RS). Each of the uplink (UL) and downlink (DL) transmission can take place over a direct or over a relayed path. Traditionally, the UL and the DL path of a given two-way link are coupled, that is, either both are direct links or both are relayed links. By removing the restriction for coupling, one opens the design space for a decoupled two-way links. Following this, we devise two protocols: orthogonal decoupled UL/DL buffer-aided (ODBA) relaying protocol and non-orthogonal decoupled UL/DL buffer-aided (NODBA) relaying protocol. In NODBA, the receiver can use successive interference cancellation (SIC) to extract the desired signal from a collision between UL and DL signals. For both protocols, we characterize the transmission decision policies in terms of maximization of the average two-way sum rate of the system. The numerical results show that decoupling association and non-orthogonal radio access lead to significant throughput gains for two-way traffic.Comment: 27 pages, 10 figures, submitted to IEEE Transactions on Communication

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