CoRe-MAC: A MAC-Protocol for Cooperative Relaying in Wireless Networks

Cooperative relaying methods can improve wireless links, but introduce overhead due to relay selection and resource reservation compared to non-cooperative transmission. In order to be competitive, a cooperative relaying protocol must avoid or compensate for this overhead. In this paper, we present a MAC protocol for relay selection and cooperative communication as an extension to CSMA/CA which addresses resource reservation, relay selection, and cooperative transmission while keeping the overhead in terms of time and energy low. We discuss the efficiency of this protocol for packet error rate, throughput, and message delay in a multi-hop network. Simulation results show that the protocol performs similar and without noticeable overhead compared to standard CSMA/CA for good SNR while it is able to significantly improve throughput and reliability at larger distances.