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Radio Resource Management for Cooperative Wireless Communication Networks

The world is demanding more from wireless communication services now than ever before. Many new wireless applications, such as internet access, mobile office, and adult entertainment are emerging. With the increasing demand for wireless communications, the issues of how to improve system performance, such as increased system capacity, enhanced system throughput, lowered transmit power, and improved Quality of Service (QoS), have attracted great research interests in recent years.

Diversity technique has been an important approach to combat fading in wireless communications. Recently, there is great research attention on multiuser diversity, which can be realized by exploring cooperative transmission. The basic idea of cooperative transmission is to create multiple channels for each user, while each user is equipped with only one transmit antenna, to deliver his/her information to the destination. As a result, spatial diversity gain can be achieved in the presence of channel fading.

For a wireless network operating in a fading environment, power and bandwidth are precious radio resources which need careful planning. With the introduction of user cooperation, the radio resource management problem faces increased degree of freedom. In this project, we aim to work on the design of the advanced radio resource management strategies for cooperative communication protocols. The proposed cooperative protocol should maintain diversity gain, compensate the rate loss due to relaying transmission, and justify the hardware complexity. The following three aspects of a wireless network design issues will be investigated: (1) Joint rate and power allocation. (2) Joint power/rate allocation and partner selection in a network environment. (3) Cooperation application in wireless sensor network (WSN).