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Buffer-aided (BA) relaying improves the diversity of cooperative networks often at the cost of increasing end-to-end packet delays. This characteristic renders BA relaying unsuitable for delay-sensitive applications. However, the increased diversity makes BA relaying appealing for ultra-reliable communications. Towards enabling ultra-reliable low-latency communication (URLLC), we aim at enhancing BA relaying for supporting delay-sensitive applications. In this paper, reliable full-duplex (FD) network operation is targeted and for this purpose, hybrid relay selection algorithms are formulated, combining BA successive relaying (SuR) and delay-and diversity-aware (DDA) half-duplex (HD) algorithms. In this context, a hybrid FD DDA algorithm is presented, namely LoLa4SOR, switching between SuR and HD operation. Additionally, a low-complexity distributed version is given, namely d-LoLa4SOR, providing a trade-off among channel state information requirements and performance. The theoretical analysis shows that the diversity of LoLa4SOR equals to two times the number of available relays K, i.e. 2K, when the buffer size L is greater than or equal to 3. Comparisons with other HD, SuR and hybrid algorithms reveal that LoLa4SOR offers superior outage and throughput performance while, the average delay is reduced due to SuR-based FD operation and the consideration of buffer state information for relay-pair selection. d-LoLa4SOR, as one of the few distributed algorithms in the literature, has a reasonable performance that makes it a more practical approach.

Buffer-Aided (BA) relaying has shown tremendous performance improvements in terms of throughput and outage probability, although it has been criticized of suffering from long delays that are restrictive for applications, such as video streaming, Web browsing, and file sharing. In this paper, we propose novel relay selection policies aiming at reducing the average delay by incorporating the buffer size of the relays into the decision making of the relay selection process. More specifically, we first propose two new delay-aware policies. One is based on the hybrid relay selection algorithm, where the relay selection takes into account the queue sizes so that the delay is reduced and the diversity is maintained. The other approach is based on the max - link relay selection algorithm. For the max - link algorithm, a delay-aware only approach starves the buffers and increases the outage probability of the system. Thus, for max - link, we propose a delay- and diversity-aware BA relay selection policy targeting the reduction of the average delay, while maintaining the diversity of the transmission. The proposed policies are analyzed by means of Markov Chains and expressions for the outage, throughput, and delay are derived. The asymptotic performance of the policies is also discussed. The improved performance in terms of delays and the use of the proposed algorithms are demonstrated via extensive simulations and comparisons, signifying, at the same time, the need for adaptive mechanisms to handle the interplay between delay and diversity.

This paper considers a mixed free-space optical/radio frequency (FSO/RF) system, which facilitates the communication between a ground central unit (CU) and multiple ground users (GUs) via a hovering unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) acting as a decode-and-forward (DF) aerial relay. It is considered that the CU employs multiple transmit apertures and is interconnected with the aerial relay via an FSO link with transmit aperture selection (TAS), whereas the relay communicates with the GUs over multiple input multiple-output (MIMO) RF links with orthogonal space-time block coding (OSTBC) transmission. It is assumed that the optical channels are mainly affected by atmospheric attenuation as well as geometric and misalignment loss (GML). Besides, the atmospheric turbulence is assumed weak for short-range links. Also, fully correlated shadowed conditions are considered in the RF links and the MIMO channels are modeled using the Nakagami/Inverse Gamma (IG) composite fading distribution. Opportunistic GU scheduling is applied in the downlink and novel closed-form mathematical formulas for the outage probability (OP) are derived. The results demonstrate the theoretical derivations and the performance benefits of the proposed approach. (C) 2021 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

The success of fifth generation (5G) mobile network and its long-term evolution (LTE) relies on enabling demanding services with massive connectivity requirements, including Internet of Things (IoT) nodes, mobile devices, or unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs). Towards this end, non-orthogonal multiple access (NOMA) schemes allow multiple users and devices to communicate using the same temporal and spectral resources. In this context, buffer-aided (BA) relay selection can significantly enhance the quality and reliability of communication, through increased diversity. So, in this paper, we employ BA relay selection in the uplink of the NOMA networks where users and devices coexist and demand access to the wireless resources. The presented relay selection policy, namely flex - NOMA, facilitates simultaneous transmissions from multiple sources to multiple relays, exploiting channel state information at the reception, and dynamic decoding ordering by the relays performing successive interference cancellation (SIC). The theoretical analysis and performance evaluation results are provided and comparisons, in terms of outage probability, average sum-rate and average delay show that flex - NOMA offers improved performance without incurring high complexity and coordination overheads. 7 88743 88755