Performance of co-operative relay for multicast multi-hop networks using virtual MIMO

Abstract

Multicasting is a bandwidth conservation technology that can utilize the resources very efficiently, reduces the traffic volume and improves the network capacity by simultaneously delivering a single stream of information to more than one intended receivers. Wireless medium is inherently multicast in nature and this property can be exploited with virtual MIMO. The improvement in BER can be achieved with multicasting over multi-hop wireless networks. The network will also be more energy efficient. The BER performance and energy consumption of two-hop networks with STBC has been simulated in this paper. These performance curves will be helpful in many ways, i.e., the selection of number of antennas on the receiver, the selection of the number of intermediate nodes (relay stations) and the selection of modulation and coding schemes to achieve a desirable BER performance. The multicast multi-hop virtual MIMO configuration is proposed for video streaming applications for Long Term Evolution (LTE) 3G wireless networks.