WWAN/WLAN two-hop-relay architecture for capacity enhancement

The integration of 3rd generation (3G) cellular networks and the IEEE 802.11 wireless local area networks has drawn considerable attention from the research and commercial communities. Emerging dual-mode mobile terminals could provide flexibility and system performance enhancement by providing seamless roaming between 3G WWANs and 802.11 WLANs. In this paper, we proposed a novel integrated WWAN/WLAN two-hop-relay architecture that both enhances the system capacity of 3G cellular systems and extends the system coverage area of 802.11 terminals. The proposed two-hop-relay architecture utilizes temporal channel quality variation to achieve increased system capacity. Typically, the system throughput is increased by 200-400% in a HDR system.