On the Achievability in Cooperative Amplify and Forward Wireless Relay Network

We analyze the characteristics and performance of a wireless ad hoc network where nodes are connected via random channels and information is transported in the network in a cooperative multihop fashion using amplify and forward relay strategy. We characterize the network by studying important parameters such as: (1) SNR degradation with hop, (2) outage probability, (3) maximum permissible number of hops, and (4) maximum permissible number of simultaneous transmissions. We then devise a method for node selection and transmission of information across the network over disjoint routes between source and destination nodes by employing standard constructs from graph theory. Based on the above results, we evaluate the throughput achievable in the network and its asymptotic scaling as function of the number of nodes in the network for a given channel distribution.