Selection cooperation in multi-source cooperative networks

In a cooperative network with multiple potential relays and multiple simultaneous transmissions, we present selection cooperation wherein each source pairs with a single "best" relay. We analyze the outage probability of a simple and completely distributed selection scheme, requiring some feedback but no centralization, and show that it outperforms distributed space-time codes for networks with more than three relaying nodes. These gains are due to the more efficient use of power in networks using selection. We suggest two other more complex selection schemes based on increasing system intelligence and centralization, and show that for smaller network sizes their performance improvement over the simple selection scheme is not significant.