= Implementation of a Cooperative MAC Protocol: Performance and challenges in a real environment =

Authors: Shasi Raj Singh, Ehtesham Akhtar Siddiqui, Thanasis Korakis, Pei Liu, Shivendra S. Panwar; Polytechnic Institute of NYU

Preprint: [http://mts.hindawi.com/utils/GetAcceptedMsFile.aspx?msid=598140&vnum=2&ftype=manuscript PDF]

== Abstract ==
Cooperative communication is an active area of research today. It enables nodes to achieve spatial diversity, 
thereby achieving tremendous improvement in system capacity and delay. Due to its immense potential, extensive 
investigations have been directed to closely examine its performance by means of both analysis and simulation. 
However, the study of this new technology in an implementation based system is very limited. In this paper, we 
present two implementation approaches to demonstrate the viability of realizing cooperation at the MAC layer in 
a real environment. The paper describes the technical challenges encountered in each of the approaches, details 
the corresponding solution proposed, and compares the limitations and benefits of the two approaches. Experimental 
measurements are reported, which not only help develop a deeper understanding of the protocol behavior, but also 
confirm that cooperative communication is a promising technology for boosting the performance of next generation 
wireless networks.

{{{
{Korakis:2009,
 Author = {Thanasis Korakis and Zhifeng Tao and Shashi Raj Singh and Pei Liu and Shivendra S. Panwar},
 title = {Implementation of a Cooperative MAC Protocol: Performance and challenges in a real environment},
 booktitle = {{EURASIP Journal on Wireless Communications and Networking}},
 year = {2009}
}