Two-Hop Opportunistic Scheduling in Cooperative Cellular Networks

Due to the tradeoff between capacity and fairness in a wide variety of networks, increasing one objective may deteriorate the other. This paper investigates the possibility of improving capacity and fairness at the same time, specifically in two-hop cellular networks. First, we prove that an achievable capacity region can be enlarged by using relay, i.e., the capacity and fairness tradeoff relationship is alleviated. To achieve the Pareto-efficient boundary of this enlarged capacity region, an appropriate scheduling algorithm should be developed. Thus, second, we propose a generalized opportunistic scheduling algorithm for relaying mode that can improve both capacity and fairness. Furthermore, we propose a heuristic algorithm with low complexity and signaling overhead for relaying mode. Extensive simulations under various configurations demonstrate that the proposed algorithm not only increases the throughput of each user but also effectively alleviates unfairness among users.