Multi-Hop Relaying and MIMO Techniques in Cellular Systems - Throughput Achievable on Rayleigh/Ricean Channels

Two very important and active areas of wireless research are multi-hop relaying and multiple antenna techniques. Wireless multi-hop relaying, adopted in emerging standards such as 802.16j, can increase the data throughput and improve coverage of cellular systems by reducing path loss, mitigating shadowing, and enabling spatial reuse. On the other hand, multiple antenna techniques can take advantage of scattering in the wireless channel to achieve higher capacity. In this paper, we look at the combination of these two techniques in a cellular system, and show that they exhibit a fundamental tradeoff. In order to obtain results that are relevant to potential actual deployments, we use realistic system parameters and a system model appropriate for MIMO operating on dual Rayleigh/Ricean channels.