Advances in cooperative wireless networking: Part I [Guest Editorial]

Over the last few years, fundamental research has demonstrated the great potential of cooperative wireless networking in increasing system capacity and enlarging the coverage area as well as enhancing quality of service (QoS) by taking advantage of cooperative diversity and multiplexing. Consequently, cooperative wireless networking has become one of the widely recognized features for future wireless communication systems. While the conventional research mainly focuses on relatively simple cooperative relay topologies or cooperation schemes under the existing infrastructure networks, cooperative networking for future wireless systems has a unique spectrum of features. Specifically, the frequent user cooperation and interaction empower mobile users with a new role as mobile service providers, in contrast to their traditional role as only consumers. In this sense, mobile users' cooperation strategy and decisions are sensitive to not only the QoS requirements of the end users' applications, but also their own benefits as rewards for providing mobile services. Moreover, the cooperation provided by mobile users does not have to rely heavily on infrastructure networks.