Multi-Flow Scheduling for Coordinated Direct and Relayed Users in Cellular Systems

There are two basic principles used in wireless network coding to design throughput-efficient schemes: (1) aggregation of communication flows and (2) interference is embraced and subsequently cancelled or mitigated. These principles inspire design of many novel multi-flow transmission (MFT) schemes. Such are the Coordinated Direct/Relay (CDR) schemes, where each basic transmission involves two flows to a direct and a relayed user. Usage of MFT schemes as building blocks of more complex transmission schemes essentially changes the problem of scheduling, since some of the flows to be scheduled are coupled in a signal domain and they need to be assigned a communication resource simultaneously. In this paper we define a novel framework that can be used to analyze MFT schemes and assess the system-level gains. The framework is based on cellular wireless users with two-way traffic and it sets the basis for devising composite time-multiplexed MFT schemes, tailored to particular optimization criteria. Those criteria can be formulated by adapting well-known schedulers in order to incorporate MFT schemes. The results show rate advantages brought by the CDR schemes in pertinent scenarios. Another key contribution is the proposed framework, which can be used to evaluate any future multi-flow transmission scheme.