Distributed Protocols for Interference Management in Cooperative Networks

In scenarios where devices are too small to support MIMO antenna arrays, symbol-level cooperation may be used to pool the resources of distributed single-antenna devices to create a virtual MIMO antenna array. We address design fundamentals for distributed cooperative protocols where relays have an incomplete view of network information. A key issue in distributed networks is potential loss in spatial reuse due to the increased radio footprint of flows with cooperative relays. Hence, local gains from cooperation have to balance against network level losses. By using a novel binary network model that simplifies the space over which cooperative protocols must be designed, we develop a mechanism for the systematic and computational development of cooperative protocols as functions of the amount of network state information available at relay nodes. Through extensive network analysis and simulations, we demonstrate the successful application of this method to a series of protocols that span a range of network information availability at cooperative relays.