A Cluster-Based Architecture for Three-Hop Communication in Next Generation Wireless Networks

Over the last 10 years, there has been an exponential growth of Internet services over cellular and wireless network. This has resulted in multiple wireless networks: macro-cell, micro-cell, femto-cell, legacy networks, etc. co-existing simultaneously. Multihop cellular networks have been well-investigated to support the heterogeneous wireless network scenario. However, this results in a very distributed and a non-optimum distribution of radio resources, leading to sub-optimal throughput of the network. Keeping this in mind, this paper proposes a three-hop heterogeneous wireless network architecture, wherein each hop would be from same network or other networks. Importantly, this paper proposes and provides a detailed analysis of a specific cluster-based architecture: three-hop network . This is the first instance where a three-hop architecture is analyzed. Accordingly, in every cell, three communicating pairs communicate using a given radio resource, but for only 1 / 3 rd the time slot period. This three-hop design enables a frequency reuse ratio of one . A comprehensive performance analysis indicates that the capacity obtained with a three-hop architecture is up to 20% higher than that can be obtained by two-hop architecture and 40% higher than traditional single-hop network. This is an extremely important result. It indicates the improvement that can be obtained in using specific design for multihop-based next generation LTE-advanced network.