Advances in cooperative wireless networking: Part II

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 the future wireless communication systems. While the conventional research mainly focuses on relatively simple cooperative relay topologies or the cooperation schemes under the existing infrastructure networks, cooperative networking for future wireless systems has its own unique spectrum of features. Specifically, frequent user cooperation and interaction empower mobile users with a new role as mobile service providers, comparing with their traditional role as only the 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 the infrastructure networks.