Routing Performance of Cooperative Diversity in Ad-Hoc Networks

Cooperative Diversity (CD) is a new perspective on wireless network communications that leverages the fact that RF energy scatters and propagates to many users simultaneously. Rather than relay packets node-by-node along a single or even multiple paths, CD creates spatial diversity by identifying multiple RF channels between groups of nodes and relays across groups of nodes. Specifically, we describe and evaluate a protocol designed to establish end-to-end communication within a large field of autonomous wireless devices producing reduced latency and greatly increased robustness against signal fading and interference. Monte Carlo simulation of the cooperative diversity routing protocol confirms its superior performance in regions of operational interest.