Distributed Cooperative Routing and Hybrid ARQ in MIMO-BLAST Ad Hoc Networks

Cooperation has proved to be an effective technique for improving the performance and the efficiency of wireless networks. Most of the existing work on cooperation focuses on the physical layer, with the aim of enhancing the capacity and the quality of a single link. In this paper we propose a cooperative protocol that melds physical, MAC and routing layers to increase the performance of a MIMO-BLAST ad hoc network, where nodes are allowed to transmit simultaneously. Nodes try to resolve in-range delivery of packets with an adaptive distributed Hybrid ARQ scheme to counteract interference from simultaneously active communications, while dynamic route selection is implemented for avoiding transmissions over links with harsh fading conditions. We assess the performance of our scheme through detailed simulations.