Two-way Communication for IEEE 802.11n WLANs Using Decode and Forward Relays

In this paper we investigate the integration of two-way decode-and-forward (2W DF) relaying in IEEE 802.11n WLANs. Two-way DF relaying is a signaling scheme recently proposed in [B. Rankov and A. Wittnesben, 2005] for half-duplex relays. We compare this scheme to conventional DF relaying in two scenarios, either the Access Point acts as a DF relay ("two-way AP") or a station. After analyzing capacity and coverage in the considered scenarios at the 5 GHz band, we conclude that 2W DF relaying is able to increase the spectral efficiency and to reduce the delay of a two hop link in an 802.1 In WLAN, while the communication range is smaller than in the case of a conventional DF relaying scheme.