Cooperative Wireless Networking: An Introductory Overview

This chapter provides an introduction to cooperative techniques in wireless networks, with emphasis on the wireless devices. A motivating introduction is first presented, discussing the scope, scenarios, and potentials of cooperative techniques. Some key challenges are also identi.ed and discussed. Cooperative approaches are then classi.ed according to the employed principles, scope, and goals as communicational, operational, and social cooperation. Finally, a very promising paradigm for cooperation in heterogeneous wireless networks is proposed and explained. This approach is based on a composite centralized-distributed architecture of two combined access networks, a wide area cellular network and a local short-range network.