It has been shown that cooperative communications (CC) have the potential to significantly increase the capacity of wireless networks. However, most of the existing results are limited to single-hop wireless networks. To illustrate the benefits of CC in multi-hop wireless networks, we solve a joint optimization problem of relay node assignment and flow routing for concurrent sessions. We study this problem via mathematical modeling and solve it using a solution procedure based on the branch-and-cut framework. We design several novel components to speed-up the computation time of branch-and-cut. Via numerical results, we show the significant rate gains that can be achieved by incorporating CC in multi-hop networks.
展开▼