Location-based optimum relay selection in random spatial networks

This paper investigates the location-based relay selection problem, where the source node chooses its relay from a set of spatially deployed decode-and-forward relays. The advantages of location-based relay selection are the elimination of excessive relay switching rate and the feedback reduction avoiding the requirement of having full channel state information at the source node. For a homogeneous Poisson point process of candidate relays, we first derive the distribution for the distance of the relay (relative to the source and destination nodes) selected by the optimum location-based relay selection policy. This result is independent of the functional form of the path-loss function as long as it is a non-increasing function of the transmitter-receiver separation. By utilizing the derived optimum relay distance distribution, we then obtain analytical expressions for the average rate and outage probability by considering the power-law decaying path-loss function for the no-fading and Rayleigh fading communication scenarios. It is observed that the optimum relay selection policy outperforms the other common selection strategies notably, including the ones choosing the relay closest to the source, the relay closest to the destination and the relay closest to the mid-point between source and destination.