Design of optimal relay location in two-hop cellular systems

Relay stations are usually used to enhance the signal strength for the users near cell boundary, thereby extending the cell coverage. However, transmission through a relay station needs two transmission phases. The first phase is from base station to relay station, and the second one is from relay station to mobile station. Thus, using relay station may decrease system capacity due to two-phase transmission time. As a result, whether or not data are transmitted by one-hop or two-hop phases should be determined according to both signal strength and throughput. In this paper, we investigate the optimal relay location aiming to maximize system capacity. We consider two relay selection rules for determining whether two-hop transmission will be used: signal strength-oriented and throughput-oriented selection rules. We find that the signal strength-oriented two-hop transmission may yield even lower system capacity than the one-hop transmission. In the throughput-oriented scheme, the two-hop transmission can achieve higher system capacity than the one-hop transmission. By simulations, we determine the optimal relay location and show the coverage enhancement by the relaying network. Extensive simulations are performed to investigate the impacts of relay transmission power and the number of relay stations on system capacity and optimal relay location. The simulation results reveal important insights into designing a relaying network with high system capacity.