In a cooperative coding scheme, network nodes work together to achieve higher transmission rates. To obtain a better understanding of cooperation, we consider a model in which two transmitters send rate-limited descriptions of their messages to a "cooperation facilitator", a node that sends back rate-limited descriptions of the pair to each transmitter. This model includes the conferencing encoders model and a prior model from the current authors as special cases. We show that except for a special class of multiple access channels, the gain in sum-capacity resulting from cooperation under this model is quite large. Adding a cooperation facilitator to any such channel results in a network that does not satisfy the edge removal property. An important special case is the Gaussian multiple access channel, for which we explicitly characterize the sum-rate cooperation gain.
Cooperation strategies allow communication devices to work together to improve network capacity. Consider a network consisting of a $k$-user multiple access channel (MAC) and a node that is connected to all $k$ encoders via rate-limited bidirectional links, referred to as the "cooperation facilitator" (CF). Define the cooperation benefit as the sum-capacity gain resulting from the communication between the encoders and the CF and the cooperation rate as the total rate the CF shares with the encoders. This work demonstrates the existence of a class of $k$-user MACs where the ratio of the cooper…
In many communication networks, the availability of channel state information at various nodes provides an opportunity for network nodes to work together, or "cooperate." This work studies the benefit of cooperation in the multiple access channel with a cooperation facilitator, distributed state information at the encoders, and full state information available at the decoder. Under various causality constraints, sufficient conditions are obtained such that encoder cooperation through the facilitator results in a gain in sum-capacity that has infinite slope in the information rate shared with t…
This work addresses the cooperation facilitator (CF) model, in which network nodes coordinate through a rate limited communication device. For independent multiple-access channel (MAC) encoders, the CF model is known to show significant rate benefits, even when the rate of cooperation is negligible. Specifically, the benefit in MAC sum-rate, as a function of the cooperation rate $C_{CF}$, sometimes has an infinite slope at $C_{CF}=0$. This work studies the question of whether cooperation through a CF can yield similar infinite-slope benefits when applied to internal network encoders in which d…
The work at hand presents a finite-blocklength analysis of the multiple access channel (MAC) sum-rate under the cooperation facilitator (CF) model. The CF model, in which independent encoders coordinate through an intermediary node, is known to show significant rate benefits, even when the rate of cooperation is limited. We continue this line of study for cooperation rates which are sub-linear in the blocklength $n$. Roughly speaking, our results show that if the facilitator transmits $\log{K}$ bits, there is a sum-rate benefit of order $\sqrt{\log{K}/n}$. This result extends across a wide ran…
In this paper, we propose a new cooperation model for discrete memoryless multiple access channels. Unlike in prior cooperation models (e.g., conferencing encoders), where the transmitters cooperate directly, in this model the transmitters cooperate through a larger network. We show that under this indirect cooperation model, there exist channels for which the increase in sum-capacity resulting from cooperation is significantly larger than the rate shared by the transmitters to establish the cooperation. This result contrasts both with results on the benefit of cooperation under prior models a…
In this work, we consider a random access Internet of Things IoT wireless network assisted by two aggregators collecting information from two disjoint groups of sensors. The nodes and the aggregators are transmitting in a random access manner under slotted time, the aggregators perform network-level cooperation for the data collection. The aggregators are equipped with queues to store data packets that are transmitted by the network nodes and relaying them to the destination node. We characterize the throughput performance of the IoT network and we obtain the stability conditions for the queue…
This paper provides a review of recent advances in multi-user cooperative data transmission. The focus is on the inherent trade-off between achievable throughput and reliability of cooperative transmission. Research has shown that under a fixed transmit energy budget, increased cooperation doesn't necessarily lead to increased reliability. In fact, careful cooperation partner selection and power allocation is needed in order to fully exploit the benefits of cooperative transmission. Furthermore, depending on the multi-media content, different cooperation strategies may need to be considered.
Interference limits performance in wireless networks, and cooperation among receivers or transmitters can help mitigate interference by forming distributed MIMO systems. Earlier work shows how limited receiver cooperation helps mitigate interference. The scenario with transmitter cooperation, however, is more difficult to tackle. In this paper we study the two-user Gaussian interference channel with conferencing transmitters to make progress towards this direction. We characterize the capacity region to within 6.5 bits/s/Hz, regardless of channel parameters. Based on the constant-to-optimality…
In network cooperation strategies, nodes work together with the aim of increasing transmission rates or reliability. This paper demonstrates that enabling cooperation between the transmitters of a two-user multiple access channel, via a cooperation facilitator that has access to both messages, always results in a network whose maximal- and average-error sum-capacities are the same---even when those capacities differ in the absence of cooperation and the information shared with the encoders is negligible. From this result, it follows that if a multiple access channel with no transmitter coopera…
Handling interference is one of the main challenges in the design of wireless networks. In this paper we study the application of cooperation for interference management in the weak interference (WI) regime, focusing on the Z-interference channel with a causal relay (Z-ICR), when the channel coefficients are subject to ergodic phase fading, all transmission powers are finite, and the relay is full-duplex. In order to provide a comprehensive understanding of the benefits of cooperation in the WI regime, we characterize, for the first time, two major performance measures for the ergodic phase fa…
There is a growing interest in energy efficient or so-called "green" wireless communication to reduce the energy consumption in cellular networks. Since today's wireless terminals are typically equipped with multiple network access interfaces such as Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, and cellular networks, this paper investigates user terminals cooperating with each other in transmitting their data packets to a base station (BS) by exploiting the multiple network access interfaces, referred to as inter-network cooperation, to improve the energy efficiency in cellular uplink transmission. Given target outage p…
This work studies the joint beamforming design problem of achieving max-min rate fairness in a satellite-terrestrial integrated network (STIN) where the satellite provides wide coverage to multibeam multicast satellite users (SUs), and the terrestrial base station (BS) serves multiple cellular users (CUs) in a densely populated area. Both the satellite and BS operate in the same frequency band. Since rate-splitting multiple access (RSMA) has recently emerged as a promising strategy for non-orthogonal transmission and robust interference management in multi-antenna wireless networks, we present…
In this paper, we propose a model for energy cooperation between cellular base stations (BSs) with individual hybrid power supplies (including both the conventional grid and renewable energy sources), limited energy storages, and connected by resistive power lines for energy sharing. When the renewable energy profile and energy demand profile at all BSs are deterministic or known ahead of time, we show that the optimal energy cooperation policy for the BSs can be found by solving a linear program. We show the benefits of energy cooperation in this regime. When the renewable energy and demand p…
We consider the transmission of a common message from a transmitter to three receivers over a broadcast channel, referred to as a multicast channel in this case. All the receivers are allowed to cooperate with each other over full-duplex bi-directional non-orthogonal cooperation links. We investigate the information-theoretic upper and lower bounds on the transmission rate. In particular, we propose a three-receiver fully interactive cooperation scheme (3FC) based on superpositions of CF and DF at the receivers. In the 3FC scheme, the receivers interactively perform compress-forward (CF) simul…
In this work, we study the benefit of partial relay cooperation. We consider a two-node system consisting of one source and one relay node transmitting information to a common destination. The source and the relay have external traffic and in addition, the relay is equipped with a flow controller to regulate the incoming traffic from the source node. The cooperation is performed at the network level. A collision channel with erasures is considered. We provide an exact characterization of the stability region of the system and we also prove that the system with partial cooperation is always bet…
Localization and tracking of moving nodes via network navigation gives rise to a new paradigm, where nodes exploit both temporal and spatial cooperation to infer their positions based on intra- and inter-node measurements. While such cooperation can significantly improve the performance, it imposes intricate information processing that impedes network design and operation. In this paper, we establish a theoretical framework for cooperative network navigation and determine the fundamental limits of navigation accuracy using equivalent Fisher information analysis. We then introduce the notion of…
In recent years, there has been a growing interest in green cellular networks for the sake of reducing the energy dissipated by communications and networking devices, including the base stations (BSs) and battery-powered user terminals (UTs). This paper investigates the joint employment of cognition and cooperation techniques invoked for improving the energy efficiency of cellular networks. To be specific, the cellular devices first have to identify the unused spectral bands (known as spectrum holes) using their spectrum sensing functionality. Then, they cooperate for exploiting the detected s…
WLAN is one of the most successful applications of wireless communications in daily life because of low cost and ease of deployment. The enabling technique for this success is the use of random access schemes for the wireless channel. Random access requires minimal coordination between the nodes, which considerably reduces the cost of the infrastructure. Recently, cooperative communication in wireless networks has been of increasing interest because it promises higher rates and reliability. An additional MAC overhead is necessary to coordinate the nodes to allow cooperation and this overhead c…
In this paper, we explore the benefits, in the sense of total (sum rate) degrees of freedom (DOF), of cooperation and cognitive message sharing for a two-user multiple-input-multiple-output (MIMO) Gaussian interference channel with $M_1$, $M_2$ antennas at transmitters and $N_1$, $N_2$ antennas at receivers. For the case of cooperation (including cooperation at transmitters only, at receivers only, and at transmitters as well as receivers), the DOF is $\min \{M_1+M_2, N_1+N_2, \max(M_1, N_2)), \max(M_2, N_1)\}$, which is the same as the DOF of the channel without cooperation. For the case of c…
Multiuser multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) systems are a prime candidate for use in massive connection density in machine-type communication (MTC) networks. One of the key challenges of MTC networks is to obtain accurate channel state information (CSI) at the access point (AP) so that the spectral efficiency can be improved by enabling enhanced MIMO techniques. However, current communication mechanisms relying upon frequency division duplexing (FDD) might not fully support an enormous number of devices due to the rate-constrained limited feedback and the time-consuming scheduling architec…
Cooperation in clouds provides a promising technique for 5G wireless networks, supporting higher data rates. Security of data transmission over wireless clouds could put constraints on devices; whether to cooperate or not. Therefore, our aim is to provide analytical framework for the security on the physical layer of such setup and to define the constraints embodied with cooperation in small size wireless clouds. In this paper, two legitimate transmitters Alice and John cooperate to increase the reliable transmission rate received by their common legitimate receiver Bob, where one eavesdropper…
In this paper we investigate the benefit of base station (BS) cooperation in the uplink of coordinated multi-point (CoMP) networks. Our figure of merit is the required BS density required to meet a chosen rate coverage. Our model assumes a 2-D network of BSs on a regular hexagonal lattice in which path loss, lognormal shadowing and Rayleigh fading affect the signal received from users. Accurate closed-form expressions are first presented for the sum-rate coverage probability and ergodic sum-rate at each point of the cooperation region. Then, for a chosen quality of user rate, the required dens…
A receiver wants to compute a function of two correlated sources separately observed by two transmitters. One of the transmitters may send a possibly private message to the other transmitter in a cooperation phase before both transmitters communicate to the receiver. For this network configuration this paper investigates both a function computation setup, wherein the receiver wants to compute a given function of the sources exactly, and a rate distortion setup, wherein the receiver wants to compute a given function within some distortion. For the function computation setup, a general inner bou…
Multi-point vehicular positioning is one essential operation for autonomous vehicles. However, the state-of-the-art positioning technologies, relying on reflected signals from a target (i.e., RADAR and LIDAR), cannot work without line-of-sight. Besides, it takes significant time for environment scanning and object recognition with potential detection inaccuracy, especially in complex urban situations. Some recent fatal accidents involving autonomous vehicles further expose such limitations. In this paper, we aim at overcoming these limitations by proposing a novel relative positioning approach…
