Link Scheduling in Wireless Cooperative Communication Networks

In this paper, we study the link scheduling problem in wireless cooperative communication networks, in which receivers are allowed to combine copies of a message from different senders to combat fading. We formulate a problem called cooperative link scheduling problem (CLS), which aims to find a schedule of links that uses the minimum number of time slots to inform all the receivers. As a solution, we propose an algorithm for CLS with g(K) approximation ratio, where g(K) is so called diversity of key links. Simulation results indicate that our cooperative link scheduling approaches outperform noncooperative ones.