Proportionally Fair Selective Cooperation for Cellular Networks: Algorithm, Simulation and Analysis

We consider the problem of 2-node cooperation for cellular networks. In the considered system, a node and a cooperative relay are selected in a proportionally fair (PF) manner to transmit to the base station (BS), which uses the maximal ratio combining (MRC) for reception. The proposed scheme integrates the PF criterion in selective cooperation to maximize the overall utility of all 2-node cooperative transmissions, and is called proportionally fair selective cooperation (PFSC). This technique does not require distributed space-time coding algorithms and its simplicity allows for immediate implementation in existing hardware. In this research, we further provide a mathematical framework to analyze the performance of PFSC under a Rayleigh flat fading channel. We also present an analytical expression for quantifying the throughput gain of a PFSC-enabled cellular network over a traditional PFS-enabled cellular network without node cooperation. Using simulations, we show that our model is very accurate. To our knowledge, it is the first time that a closed-form expression is obtained for the throughput of 2-node cooperative communication in a cellular network with the PF constraint.