Power Allocation in Wireless Relay Networks

Abstract

This thesis is mainly concerned with power allocation issues in wireless relay networks where a single or multiple relays assist transmission from a single or multiple sources to a destination.

First, a network model with a single source and multiple relays is considered, in which both cases of orthogonal and non--orthogonal relaying are investigated. For the case of orthogonal relaying, two power allocation schemes corresponding to two partial channel state information (CSI) assumptions are proposed. Given the lack of full and perfect CSI, appropriate signal processing at the relays and/or destination is also developed. The performance behavior of the system with power allocation between the source and the relays is also analyzed. For the case of non-orthogonal relaying, it is demonstrated that optimal power allocation is not sufficiently effective. Instead, a relay beamforming scheme is proposed. A comprehensive comparison between the orthogonal relaying with power allocation scheme and the non-orthogonal relaying with beamforming scheme is then carried out, which reveals several interesting conclusions with respect to both error performance and system throughput.

In the second part of the thesis, a network model with multiple sources and a single relay is considered. The transmission model is applicable for uplink channels in cellular mobile systems in which multiple mobile terminals communicate with the base station with the help of a single relay station. Single-carrier frequency division multiple access (SC-FDMA) technique with frequency domain equalization is adopted in order to avoid the amplification of the multiple access interference at the relay. Minimizing the transmit power at the relay and optimizing the fairness among the sources in terms of throughput are the two objectives considered in implementing power allocation schemes. The problems are visualized as water-filling and water-discharging models and two optimal power allocation schemes are proposed, accordingly.

Finally, the last part of the thesis is extended to a network model with multiple sources and multiple relays. The orthogonal multiple access technique is employed in order to avoid multiple access interference. Proposed is a joint optimal beamforming and power allocation scheme in which an alternative optimization technique is applied to deal with the non-convexity of the power allocation problem. Furthermore, recognizing the high complexity and large overhead information exchange when the number of sources and relays increases, a relay selection scheme is proposed. Since each source is supported by at most one relay, the feedback information from the destination to each relay can be significantly reduced. Using an equal power allocation scheme, relay selection is still an NP-hard combinatorial optimization problem. Nevertheless, the proposed sub-optimal scheme yields a comparable performance with a much lower computational complexity and can be well suited for practical systems.