Cooperative MAC protocol with automatic relay selection in distributed wireless networks

Cooperative transmission can obtain spatial diversity without using multiple antennas, thus achieving more reliable transmission or consuming less power. To realize cooperative communication in a distributed wireless network, two key questions need to be answered, namely when to cooperate and whom to cooperate with. In this paper, we propose a distributed MAC protocol with automatic relay selection to address these questions. We show by theoretical analysis and simulation results that the proposed solution outperforms conventional noncooperation transmission by 8 to 10 dB, for various target outage probabilities.