Cooperation and Cognition in Wireless Networks

Abstract— The fundamental limits of communication over a wireless network of nodes has recently become an area of intense research. Even in the simplest case, the information theoretic capacity region of multi-terminal networks remains an open problem. The analysis of networks is made even richer through the recent introduction of cognitive radios, which could allow for cooperation between network nodes. In this paper we present a decomposition of arbitrary wireless networks with cognitive and noncognitive nodes, which reduces the network to a set of clusters which behave in competitive, cognitive and cooperative fashions. We survey results on the more classical competitive and cooperative behaviors, and explore two examples of the recently introduced cognitive behavior in more depth. These two examples highlight different aspects of the asymmetric cooperation implied by cognitive behavior, and demonstrate the potential of asymmetric cooperation in wireless networks.