Channel assignment in multi-hop TDD W-CDMA cellular networks

Relaying is a fundamental concept in multi-hop wireless ad hoc networks whereby communications between mobile terminals are carried out through intermediate nodes. The small distance and the potential high transmission rate between the relaying entities draws our attention to the significance of multi-hop relaying in hot and/or dead spots. Consequently, when relaying is employed in cellular networks, poor communications to and from the base station due to severe multi-path fading and/or noise can be avoided. Hence, in this paper, multi-hop relaying is used as an overlay architecture for single-hop time division duplex (TDD) wideband-code division multiple access (W-CDMA) cellular networks. A major challenge pertaining to the introduction of this technology into cellular networks is the design of an efficient slot assignment algorithm for relaying nodes. In this paper, we propose a heuristic slot assignment scheme, namely delay-sensitive slot assignment (DSSA). DSSA is capable of fully utilizing a limited number of channels to enhance spatial reuse and reduce the end-to-end delay.