Multihop networks for capacity and coverage enhancement in TDD/UTRAN

The provision of high capacity, low cost and reliable wireless multimedia communication for bursty packet traffic (as well as voice and delay constrained streaming traffic) continues to be a challenging aspect of future wireless communications systems. In this sense, structured and ad-hoc multihop networks and intelligent relaying are expected to play a significant role in 4G wireless communication systems. These systems have the potential to cost-effectively extend the coverage and/or increase spectral efficiency, thus driving the cost of delivering 4G services lower. Radio Resource Management (RRM) and individual radio link management in such networks will be crucial in ensuring that radio and network resources are utilised efficiently. In parallel, advances in radio transceiver techniques such as multiple antennas architectures, Space Time Coding (STC), cost effective Multi User Detection (MUD) and modulations adapting to channel variations will play an important role in the Relay-Relay link, as well as in the BS-Relay link which will most likely support the bottleneck of deployment of multihop networks. The techniques described here are the fundamentals for the definition and analysis of such systems.