Performance Analysis of a Cooperative Wireless Network with Adaptive Relays: A Network-Level Study

In this work, we investigate the stability region, the throughput performance, and the queueing delay of an asymmetric relay-assisted cooperative random access wireless network with multipacket reception (MPR) capabilities. We consider a network of N saturated source users that transmit packets to a common destination node with the cooperation of two relay nodes. The relays are equipped with infinite capacity buffers, and assist the users by forwarding the packets that failed to reach the destination. Moreover, the relays have also packets of their own to transmit to the destination. We assume random access of the medium and slotted time. With the relay-assisted cooperation, the packets originated by each user can be transmitted to the destination through multiple relaying paths formed by the relays. We assume that the relays employ an adaptive retransmission control mechanism. In particular, a relay node is aware of the status of the other relay, and accordingly adapts its transmission probability. Such a protocol is towards self-aware networks and leads to substantial performance gains in terms of delay. We investigate the stability region and the throughput performance for the full MPR model. Moreover, for the two-user, two-relay case we derive the generating function of the stationary joint queue-length distribution at the relays by solving a Riemann-Hilbert boundary value problem. Finally, for the symmetric case we obtain explicit expressions for the average queueing delay in a relay node without the need of solving a boundary value problem. Numerical examples are presented providing insights on the system performance.