Clique-Based Capacity Analysis of Wireless Ad-Hoc Networks with Cooperative Relaying in Multi-Flow Scenario

Cooperative relaying techniques have been shown to provide spatial diversity in fading wireless environment. As a result, they increase link reliability, provide higher capacity, reduce transmit power, and extend transmission range as opposed to non-cooperative transmission (direct transmission). Although the use of cooperative relaying has been proven to achieve those gains in the absence of interference (single flow), it is not clear how much gain we can expect from using cooperative relaying in multi-flow scenario specifically the total network capacity. The network capacity in multi-hop multi-flow settings is severely affected by interference between links and, this effect increases when the cooperative relaying is imposed. In this paper, we use a clique based capacity analysis to investigate the performance gain (loss) on network capacity for wireless ad hoc networks by using cooperative relaying. It is observed that the throughput drops significantly when cooperative links are imposed in the network.