Cooperation in Wireless Networks: Principles and Applications: The Real Egoistic Behavior Is to Cooperate!

Cooperation is known as an effective strategy in nature to achieve individual or common goals by forming cooperative groups. As the cross over between nature and engineering has always been fruitful, Cooperation in Wireless Networks: Principles and Applications advocates the use of cooperative strategies in the field of wireless communications. Whether to cooperate or act autonomously, i.e., in a more selfish manner, has to be decided by each wireless terminal individually. Following the rule "The real egoistic behavior is to cooperate", mutual aid among terminals will be applied if and only if it is beneficial for all group members. Cooperation in Wireless Networks: Principles and Applications covers the underlying principles of cooperative techniques as well as several applications demonstrating the use of such techniques in practical systems. The work is written in a collaborative manner by several authors from Asia, America, and Europe. Twenty chapters introduce and discuss in detail the main cooperative strategies for the whole communication protocol stack from the application layer down to the physical layer. Furthermore power saving strategies, security, hardware realization, and user scenarios for cooperative communication systems are introduced and discussed. The book also summarizes the strength of cooperation for upcoming generation of wireless communication systems, clearly motivating the use of cooperative techniques and pointing out that cooperation will become one of the key technologies enabling 4G and beyond. This book puts into one volume a comprehensive and technically rich view of the wireless communications scene from a cooperation point of view.