Opportunistic Wireless Relay Networks: Diversity-Multiplexing Tradeoff

The performance of many opportunistic relay networks has been unknown in part because opportunistic analysis relies on independence assumptions that break down in many interesting and useful network topologies. This paper develops techniques that expand opportunistic analysis to a broader class of networks, proposes new opportunistic methods for several network geometries, and analyzes them in the high-SNR regime. For each of the geometries studied in the paper, we analyze the opportunistic DMT of several relay protocols, including amplify-and-forward, decode-and-forward, compress-and-forward, nonorthogonal amplify-forward, and dynamic decode-forward. Among the highlights of the results: In a variety of multi-user single-relay networks, simple selection strategies are developed and shown to be DMT-optimal. It is shown that compress-forward relaying achieves the DMT upper bound in the opportunistic multiple-access relay channel as well as in the opportunistic n×n user network with relay. Other protocols, e.g., dynamic decode-forward, are shown to be near optimal in several cases. Finite-precision feedback is analyzed for the opportunistic multiple-access relay channel, the opportunistic broadcast relay channel, and the opportunistic gateway channel, and is shown to be almost as good as full channel state information.