Performance comparison of cooperative and non-cooperative relaying mechanisms in wireless networks

Relaying is a known method for increasing coverage in wireless communication systems. In addition to coverage increase, new cooperative relaying methods have been proposed that may increase the wireless system capacity by taking advantage of higher data rates in intermediate cooperating relaying nodes. This paper investigates the performance of several of these relaying methods in terms of maximum achievable throughput at MAC service access point for single-frequency wireless ad-hoc networks. The simulation framework used is described, and the performance limitations of the relaying methods are analysed. We find that relaying, cooperative or not, does not significantly increase maximum achievable throughput for line-of-sight (LOS) propagation environments. The achievable throughput can be significantly increased for non-line of sight (NLOS) environments under specific conditions for source/destination and intermediate relaying nodes