Diversity-Based Relay Selection for Multihop Cellular Networks

Cellular networks are expected to change to Multi-hop Cellular Networks (MCNs). While a mobile station and the base station have a direct link in a conventional cellular network, in MCN, mobile stations with unsatisfactory path to the base station, could instead relay their data through other mobile stations with better channel conditions. This can improve coverage and capacity, and reduce the total transmission power, but its efficiency depends on the relaying strategy used. This paper investigates a new efficient relay selection method in multihop cellular networks. In our novel relay selection scheme, a mobile station chooses two relay stations which have the best in distance criterion and sends its data through these relay stations. The capacity improvement due to the proposed schemes is demonstrated through simulation results.