Rate allocation and relaying strategy adaption in wireless relay networks

In this paper, we propose a dynamic rate allocation and relaying strategy adaption scheme for data transmission over wireless relay networks, where autonomous nodes expose node-selfishness, i.e. being unwilling to forward other nodes’ data packets, for saving their energy resources. Aided by an incentive mechanism, we develop a virtual node-selfishness queue (VSQ) to portray the node’s dynamic selfish characteristic in terms of its energy resource and incentives. Then, a stochastic optimization model is employed to maximize the average network throughput whilst keeping the network stable and bounding the node-selfishness. The problem of stochastic optimization is further decomposed into two subproblems via the Lyapunov optimization theory, which corresponds to the rate allocation for source and the relaying strategy adaption for autonomous relay, respectively. After that, a joint rate allocation and relaying strategy adaption algorithm is developed to accommodate the wireless network only according to the current network state information, i.e. the data queue sate information, VSQ information at relays and the channel state information of the links. The explicit tradeoff between network throughput and average data transmission delay is theoretically proven. Simulation results validate the theoretical analysis of our proposed scheme.