A clustering and cooperative infrastructure for next generation cellular networks

Transmit diversity generally requires more than one antenna at the transmitter. However, many wireless devices are limited by size or hardware complexity to one antenna. Recently, a new class of methods called cooperative communication has been proposed that enables single antenna mobiles in a multiuser environment to share their antennas and generate a virtual multiple-antenna transmitter that allows them to achieve transmit diversity. We propose a novel clustering structure for cooperative communication systems, whose objective is to increase the cellular network throughput and further improve the system performance. In this cellular system, we consider all the available users are divided into two groups. The super group is served by Base Station (BS), and the Mobile Stations (MSs) locate in the cell boundary are served by the clusterhead (CH) which is elect from the regular group. Simulation results show that this scheme can bring higher system throughput, and it also can increase the data rate at the cell edge.