An industrial perspective of relaying for cellular systems

In recent years, the problem of designing efficient relaying schemes has attracted much effort within the research community. However, from a practical deployment point of view, many aspects remain unclear. In this paper we endeavour to provide an industrial perspective on this problem. First, we describe the main characteristics and deployment-related aspects of relays. Second, we give an overview of the status of relaying in LTE-Advanced and present some simulation results to assess the performance of relays in various scenarios of relevance to LTE-Advanced. Finally, we discuss short-term extensions and present some long-term research issues, that, if solved, would make a significant impact on the design of future cellular networks.