Relaying and routing in wireless networks: a throughput comparison

Relaying is a known method used to increase coverage in wireless communication systems. In addition to coverage increase, new relaying methods have been proposed that may increase the multi-hop wireless system capacity by taking advantage of higher data rates achievable with intermediate relaying nodes. At the same time, multi-hop wireless networks can be created, relatively simply, by running any of the proposed MANET routing protocols. Several questions can be raised: what is the best achievable network performance for a system composed of single-frequency wireless nodes able to use cooperative and non-cooperative relaying? how does the network throughput of a system using relaying nodes compare to that of a system that does not use relaying at all? This paper presents initial answers to these questions using results obtained through the simulation of single-frequency wireless ad-hoc networks using static and dynamic MANET routing, with nodes supporting several co-operative relaying schemas