Saturation throughput gain: A MAC layer performance indicator in terms of cooperations

Cooperative networking is a highly promising communications paradigm that is expected to play an essential role in the next generation of wireless mobile networks. Many cooperation opportunities are found and decisions are made at MAC layer, where a performance index is needed as a reference to evaluate the effectiveness of cooperations. In this work, we serve this purpose by proposing a saturation throughput gain (STG) index. We present mathematically the STG of the MAC layer cooperative data relaying of direct spread spectrum ultra wide band systems. The result shows that STG can effectively evaluate the cooperation gain at MAC layer and varies significantly with different MAC layer fairness mechanisms.