On the Stability Region of Cooperative Relay Networks with Fading States

This paper considers an amplify-and-forward relay network and determines its maximum stable throughput. Amplify-and-forward (and other forwarding schemes) form the core mechanism for enabling cooperative communication in wireless networks, and thus determining stabilizing policies for such networks is an important problem. The interaction between nodes in this network is described in terms of continuous-valued signals instead of discrete “packets”. Hence, the stability analysis for relay networks is by no means a straightforward extension of that in packet-based networks.