A cross layer routing metric with wireless cooperative protocols

Cooperative link layer protocols are typically used in single hop networks. In such protocols, a special node called the relay node helps deliver frames from a source to a destination. The performance benefits of cooperation at link layer can be streamlined into multi-hop networks as well. In multi-hop networks, a frame is sent from an original source to the final destination through a series of intermediate nodes. The paper extends the expected transmission time metric — proposed for multi-hop wireless ad hoc networks — to the context of cooperative IEEE 802.11 link layer protocol. The designed metric is called cooperative expected transmission time (CETT). CETT carefully accounts for the higher probability of successful frame transmission and therefore the reduction in expected transmission time brought about by the relay node in the cooperative protocol. CETT jointly optimizes both the route computation and the selection of the cooperative relay at the link layer. Route optimization helps jointly choose the best set of intermediate nodes and cooperation optimization helps choose the best relay node for each link in the multi-hop. As a result, CETT helps distinguish the case wherein it is better to use a node as a relay as compared to using it as an intermediate node. For comparison, the case where cooperation is applied after route computation is also presented. Minimizing the expected transmission time may result in more efficient link utilization and increased overall end-to-end network throughput. It is also shown that joint optimization of route and relay selection is better than finding routes and then applying cooperation.