Capacity-Optimized Topology Control for MANETs with Cooperative Communications

Cooperative communication can significantly enhance transmission reliability and bandwidth efficiency in wireless networks. Most existing works are focused on physical layer issues of cooperative communications. Many upper layer aspects of cooperative communications merit further research. In this paper, we investigate its impacts on network topology and capacity. Specifically, we present a novel Capacity-Optimized COoperative (COCO) topology control scheme for mobile ad hoc networks (MANETs) with cooperative communications. We consider both upper layer network capacity and physical layer relay selections in the proposed scheme. In addition, only the channel estimate, not the perfect channel status, is assumed to be known in our scheme. The topology control problem in MANETs is formulated as a discrete stochastic optimization problem, which can be solved using a stochastic approximation approach. Simulation results are presented to show the effectiveness of the proposed scheme.