Link Scheduling in Cooperative Communication with SINR-Based Interference

Though intensive research efforts have been devoted to the study of the link scheduling problem in wireless networks, no previous work has discussed this problem for cooperative communication networks, in which receivers are allowed to combine messages from different senders to combat transmission errors. In this paper, we study the link scheduling problem in wireless cooperative communication networks, in which receivers are allowed to combine copies of a message to combat fading. We formulate two problems named cooperative link scheduling problem (CLS) and one-shot cooperative link scheduling problem (OCLS). The first problem aims to find a schedule of links that uses the minimum number of time slots to inform all the receivers. The second problem aims to find a set of links that can inform the maximum number of receivers in one time slot. As a solution, we propose an algorithm for both CLS and OCLS with g(K) approximation ratio, where g(K) is so called diversity of key links. In addition, we propose a greedy algorithm with O(1) approximation ratio for OCLS when the number of links for each receiver is upper bounded by a constant. Simulation results indicate that our cooperative link scheduling approaches outperform non-cooperative ones.

尽管在无线网络的链路调度问题研究上已经投入了大量的研究精力，但之前的工作都没有针对协作通信网络讨论这个问题，在协作通信网络中，接收端被允许组合来自不同发送端的消息以对抗传输错误。在本文中，我们研究无线协作通信网络中的链路调度问题，其中接收端被允许组合消息的副本以对抗衰落。我们提出了两个问题，分别是协作链路调度问题（CLS）和一次性协作链路调度问题（OCLS）。第一个问题旨在找到一种链路调度方案，使用最少的时隙来通知所有接收端。第二个问题旨在找到一组链路，能够在一个时隙内通知最多数量的接收端。作为一种解决方案，我们针对CLS和OCLS提出了一种具有g(K)近似比的算法，其中g(K)被称为关键链路的多样性。此外，当每个接收端的链路数量有一个常数上限时，我们针对OCLS提出了一种具有O(1)近似比的贪心算法。仿真结果表明，我们的协作链路调度方法优于非协作方法。