Multi-Hop Relay for Next-Generation Wireless Access Networks

Recently, there has been an upsurge of interest in multi-hop relay in both academia and industry. By breaking a long distance low quality link into two or more high quality segments, multi-hop relay is introduced to enable trafficlsignaling forwarding between the base station and mobile user. Coverage is effectively extended to heavily shadowed areas in the cell or other distant areas beyond cell range by multi-hop relay Meanwhile, it also provides throughput enhancement, especially at the cell edge. This paper first reviews the key technical advances with multi-hop relay in cellular networks. Then, novel technical solutions and algorithms for multi-hop relay are introduced and analyzed, including the separation of control and data, effective signal-to-interference-plus-noise ratio (SINR)-based routing algorithms, and cooperative relay schemes. Through extensive system-level and link-level simulations, we present improvements in both capacity and coverage in multi-hop relay networks compared to the legacy cellular network. (c) 2009 Alcatel-Lucent.