Partner selection and resource allocation in single-cell, multi-cell and cognitive cooperative multiple access channels

Wireless communication has been widely used across the globe for several years. As the technology advances and gains popularity, more people start using it and more throughput is needed. For that reason, several techniques are being researched such as MIMO systems and cooperative networks. Wireless cooperative networks make use of the natural property of radiation of electromagnetic waves. Since the waves emitted by a user in the network can be heard by all users in the network, one cooperating partner uses this overheard information to increase throughput. However, to maximize the throughput of a system, cooperating partners must be selected intelligently. In this dissertation, first, we will summarize cooperative communication basics, techniques we used in convex optimization and graph theory. Then, we will show how these concepts can be used together to optimally maximize system throughput and propose lower complexity yet nearly-optimal partner selection algorithm will be proposed. Under the light of the results of this work, in the next chapters, we will introduce a novel fractional frequency reuse scheme which encourages users to cooperate and allow system to support more users. In the last chapter, a cognitive scenario will be used for one cell and we will present the optimal partner selection scheme for system throughput maximization.