Opportunistic Wireless Relay Networks: Diversity-Multiplexing Tradeoff

Opportunistic analysis has traditionally relied on independence assumptions that break down in many interesting and useful network topologies. This paper develops techniques that expand opportunistic analysis to a broader class of networks, proposes new opportunistic methods for several network geometries, and analyzes them in the high-SNR regime. For each of the geometries studied in the paper, we analyze the opportunistic DMT of several relay protocols, including amplify-and-forward, decode-and-forward, compress-and-forward, non-orthogonal amplify-forward, and dynamic decode-forward. Among the highlights of the results: in a variety of multi-user single-relay networks, simple selection strategies are developed and shown to be DMT-optimal. It is shown that compress-forward relaying achieves the DMT upper bound in the opportunistic multiple-access relay channel as well as in the opportunistic nxn user network with relay. Other protocols, e.g. dynamic decode-forward, are shown to be near optimal in several cases. Finite-precision feedback is analyzed for the opportunistic multiple-access relay channel, the opportunistic broadcast relay channel, and the opportunistic gateway channel, and is shown to be almost as good as full channel state information.