Buffer-aided Relay Selection Technique in a Cooperative Communication Network

Abstract

The goal of cooperative communication is to increase spatial diversity and wireless network coverage. However, in a classical relaying setup, where a single best relay is chosen to receive the source's data in the first time slot and retransmit in the second time slot regardless of channel circumstances, channel mismatch occurs. In this paper, we have developed an enhanced relay selection technique at the relay nodes that incorporates buffers to address the aforementioned problem. The outage probability and throughput computations are derived using closed-form formulas. The results obtained show that the enhanced relay selection technique gives lower values in outage probability and higher values in throughput when compared with the conventional technique, providing it a desirable strategy for use in technical communication.