A Relay Station Deployment with Particular K-means Strategy for Multi-hop Relay Network Systems

Multi-hop relay network systems allow users to communicate with a base station via a relay station, such as WiMAX 802.16j and Long Term Evolution (LTE)-Advanced. The overall coverage for the systems can be increased apparently and the throughput for the users will be enhanced by deploying suitable relay stations in such network systems. Considering a trade-off among the network throughput, the deployment budget, and the overall coverage, efficient relay station deployment strategies and corresponding algorithms must be developed and designed. This paper proposes a novel relay station placement strategy for the multi-hop relay network systems to enhance the overall coverage and maintain the network throughput at an acceptable level. We adopt the clustering concepts to select the better locations of relay stations from candidate positions. Simulation results show that the coverage for the systems and the throughput for the users can be increased by employing our proposed strategy in multi-hop relay network systems.