On optimum relay deployment in a multi-hop linear network with cooperation

There has been a growing interest in designing relay deployment strategies for cooperative wireless networks. In this paper, we focus on multi-hop, cluster-based, linear networks. Several relay selection strategies are applied to achieve the cooperative diversity benefits. We derive the number of hops that minimizes the end-to-end outage probability. On the other hand, if the required overhead for cooperation is considered, increasing the number of relays in each cluster can degrade the performance. Using an information-theoretic approach, we also investigate the number of relays that maximizes the throughput. Simulation results are presented to verify the analysis.