In a multihop cellular network, the physical layer of mobile terminals is modified so that in addition to being able to transmit to base stations, mobile terminals are also able to transmit directly to other mobile terminals. This allows mobile terminals to lower their maximum transmission power and use other terminals to relay their traffic towards the base station. However, there is still a large amount of interference surrounding the base station because all traffic either emanates or is destined to the base station making it the capacity bottleneck of the network. In order to reduce the interference surrounding the base station, we propose a novel architecture called the autonomous infrastructure multihop cellular network. In this architecture, certain mobile terminals that have a connection to the backbone network will be allowed to act as access points. Access points will receive traffic from other terminals and send it directly onto the backbone network, as would a base station. This will reduce the amount of traffic required to be handled by the base station and increase network capacity. The results of our analysis and simulations show that when mobile terminals can act as access points, the SINR at the base station is higher, the power consumption is lower and the coverage is better than in a normal multihop cellular network.
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