Analysis of hybrid relaying in cooperative WLAN

An ever-growing demand for higher data-rates has facilitated the growth of wireless networks in the past decades. Nevertheless, wireless technologies face performance limitations due to unstable wireless conditions and mobility of devices. In face of multi-path propagation and low data-rate stations, cooperative relaying promises gains in performance and reliability. However, cooperation procedures are unstable and introduce overhead that can endanger performance. In this paper we analyze the performance of a hybrid relaying protocol build based on the combination of opportunistic and broadcast-based relaying approaches. Hybrid relaying aims to increase the transmission capacity of wireless networks (proactive operation) when compared to proactive opportunistic and broadcast-based approaches due to rectifying the setbacks involved in those approaches, while adding a reactive approach to recover from failed transmissions.