Self-organizing relay stations in relay based cellular networks

The increasing popularity of wireless communications and the higher data requirements of new types of service lead to higher demands on wireless networks. Relay based cellular networks have been seen as an effective way to meet users' increased bit rate requirements while still retaining the benefits of a cellular structure. The objective of this paper is to illustrate effective and efficient approaches for fast deployment of relay stations into existing cellular networks and to demonstrate improvements to system capacity and performance resulting from cooperation between network components. Cooperative control based on geographic load balancing is employed to provide flexibility for the wireless network and respond to changes in the environment. Flexibility in the antenna system is used to provide coverage at the right place at the right time. Experiments show that the proposed approach has significant improvements and robustness in heterogeneous traffic scenarios, even in disaster conditions where some base stations fail. The performance evaluations are based on Mobile WiMAX technology, but the concepts apply more generally. (C) 2008 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.