Abstract

In this paper, a cooperative protocol is proposed for wireless mesh networks. Two features are implemented: on-demand cooperation and selection of the best relay. First, cooperation is activated by a destination terminal when it fails in decoding the message from a source terminal. Second, a selection of the best relay is performed when cooperation is needed. The robustness of wireless links are increased while the resource consumption is minimized. The selection of the best relay is performed by a splitting algorithm, ensuring a fast selection process, the duration of which is now fully characterized. Only terminals that improve the direct link participate in the relay selection and inefficient cooperation is avoided. The proposed protocol is demonstrated to achieve an optimal diversity-multiplexing trade-off. This study focuses on Nakagami-m wireless channel models to encompass a variety of fading models in the context of wireless mesh networks.