Abstract
In this paper, we consider multi-relay cooperative networks for the Rayleigh fading channel, where each relay, upon receiving its own channel observation, independently compresses it and forwards the compressed information to the destination. Although the compression at each relay is distributed using Wyner-Ziv coding, there exists an opportunity for jointly optimizing compression at multiple relays to maximize the achievable rate. Considering Gaussian signalling, a primal optimization problem is formulated accordingly. We prove that the primal problem can be solved by resorting to its Lagrangian dual problem and an iterative optimization algorithm is proposed. The analysis is further extended to a hybrid scheme, where the employed forwarding scheme depends on the decoding status of each relay. The relays that are capable of successful decoding perform decode-and-forward and the rest conduct distributed compression. The hybrid scheme allows the cooperative network to adapt to the changes of the channel conditions and benefit from an enhanced level of flexibility. Numerical results from both spectrum and energy efficiency perspectives show that the joint optimization improves efficiency of compression and identify the scenarios where the proposed schemes outperform the conventional forwarding schemes. The findings provide important insights into the optimal deployment of relays in a realistic cellular network.