Cooperative Communications

TLDR

The survey is not exhaustive and focuses on wireless networks, though many results also apply to wireline and mixed networks. The article reviews recent progress in cooperative communication networks, compiles a representative sample as a roadmap, and serves as a tutorial for readers familiar with information theory while encouraging designers to apply network cooperation ideas. The authors review progress, compile recent results, and present them as a tutorial roadmap for the field. The paper provides a digest of significant results useful for active researchers.

Abstract

This article reviews progress in cooperative communication networks. Our survey is by no means exhaustive. Instead, we assemble a representative sample of recent results to serve as a roadmap for the area. Our emphasis is on wireless networks, but many of the results apply to cooperation in wireline networks and mixed wireless/wireline networks. We intend our presentation to be a tutorial for the reader who is familiar with information theory concepts but has not actively followed the field. For the active researcher, this contribution should serve as a useful digest of significant results. This article is meant to encourage readers to find new ways to apply the ideas of network cooperation and should make the area sufficiently accessible to network designers to contribute to the advancement of networking practice.