Cooperative communications in multihop networking: a case study based on the IEEE 802.11 protocol

This paper combines multi-hop networking with single-hop cooperative communications. The solution is built upon the standard IEEE 802.11 protocol operating in the ad hoc mode. A simulation based comparison is carried out in order to evaluate the performance gains and benefit of cooperative communications applied to multi-hop networking. Preliminary results indicate that network performance in terms of both throughput and end-to-end delay improves. Additionally, cooperative communications increases robustness against uncertainties in the wireless channel.