Cooperative relay communications in mesh networks

In previous literature on cooperative relay communications, the emphasis has been on the study of multi-hop networks. In this paper we address mesh wireless networks that use decode-and-forward relays for which we derive the optimal node decision rules in case of binary transmission. We also obtain the expression for the overall bit error probability. We compare the mesh networks with multi-hop networks and show the improvement in performance that can be achieved with them when both networks have the same number of nodes and equal number of hops.