Information Theoretical Limits on Cooperative Communications

Abstract

This chapter provides an overview of the information theoretic foundations of cooperative communications. Earlier information theoretic achievements, as well as the more recent developments, are discussed. The analysis accounts for full/half-duplex node, and for multiple relays. Various channel models such as discrete memoryless, additive white Gaussian noise (AWGN), and fading channels are considered. Cooperative communication protocols are investigated using capacity, diversity, and diversity-multiplexing tradeoff (DMT) as performance metrics. Overall, this chapter provides a comprehensive view on the foundations of and the state-of-the-art reached in the theory of cooperative communications. © 2010, IGI Global.