Abstract Radio resource management techniques for broadband wireless systems beyond the existing cellular systems are developed while considering their special characteristics such as multi-carrier techniques, adaptive radio links and multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) antenna techniques. Special focus is put on the design of linear transmission strategies in a cooperative cellular system where signal processing can be performed in a centralised manner across distributed base station (BS) antenna heads. A time-division duplex cellular system based on orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) with adaptive MIMO transmission is considered in the case where the received signals are corrupted by non-reciprocal inter-cell interference. A bandwidth efficient closed-loop compensation algorithm combined with interference suppression at the receiver is proposed to compensate for the interference and to guarantee the desired Quality of Service (QoS) when the interference structure is known solely at the receiver. A greedy beam ordering and selection algorithm is proposed to maximise the sum rate of a multiuser MIMO downlink (DL) with a block zero forcing (ZF) transmission. The performance of the block-ZF transmission combined with the greedy scheduling is shown to approach the sum capacity as the number of users increases. The maximum sum rate is often found to be achieved by transmitting to a smaller number of users or beams than the spatial dimensions allow. In addition, a low complexity algorithm for joint user, bit and power allocation with a low signalling overhead is proposed. Different linear transmission schemes, including the ZF as a special case, are developed for the scenario where the cooperative processing of the transmitted signal is applied to users located within a soft handover (SHO) region. The considered optimisation criteria include minimum power beamformer design; balancing the weighted signal-to-interference-plus-noise ratio (SINR) values per data stream; weighted sum rate maximisation; and balancing the weighted rate per user with additional QoS constraints such as guaranteed bit rate per user. The method can accommodate supplementary constraints, e.g., per antenna or per BS power constraints, and upper/lower bounds for the SINR values of the data streams. The proposed iterative algorithms are shown to provide powerful solutions for difficult non-convex transceiver optimisation problems. System level evaluation is performed in order to assess the impact of a realistic multi-cell environment on the performance of a cellular MIMO-OFDM system. The users located in the SHO region are shown to benefit from greatly increased transmission rates. Consequently, significant overall system level gains result from cooperative SHO processing. The proposed SHO scheme can be used for providing a more evenly distributed service over the entire cellular network.

In this thesis, we consider a cooperative relay-assisted communication system that uses rateless codes. When multiple relays are present, the relay with the highest channel gain to the source is the first to successfully decode a message from the source and forward it to the destination. Thus, the unique properties of rateless codes ensure that both rate adaptation and relay selection occur without the transmitting source or relays acquiring instantaneous channel knowledge. We show that in such cooperative systems, buffering messages at relays significantly increases throughput. We develop a novel analysis of these systems that combines the communication-theoretic aspects of cooperation over fading channels with the queuing-theoretic aspects associated with buffering. Closed-form expressions are derived for the throughput and end-to-end delay for the general case in which the channels between various nodes are not statistically identical. Results are also shown for the benchmark system that does not buffer messages. Though relay selection combined with buffering of messages at the relays substantially increases the throughput of a cooperative network, it also increases the end-to-end delays due to the additional queuing delays at the relay nodes. In order to overcome this, we propose a novel method that exploits a unique property of rateless codes that enables a receiver to decode a message from non-contiguous and unordered portions of the received signal. In it, each relay, depending on its queue length, ignores its received coded bits with a given probability. We show that this substantially reduces the end-to-end delays while retaining almost all of the throughput gain achieved by buffering. In effect, the method increases the odds that the message is first decoded by a relay with a smaller queue. Thus, the queuing load is balanced across the relays and traded off with transmission times. We derive conditions for the stability of this system when the various channels undergo fading. Despite encountering analytically intractable G/GI/1 queues in our system, we also gain insights about the method by analyzing a similar system with a simpler model for the relay-to-destination transmission times. Next we combine the single relay selection scheme at the source with physical layer power control at the relays (due to the diversity provided by the rateless codes, power control at the source is not needed). We derive an optimal power control policy that minimizes the relay to destination transmission time. Due to its computational and implementation complexity, we develop another heuristic easily implementable near optimal policy. In this policy, power allocated turns out to be inversely proportional to the square root of channel gain. We also see that this policy performs better than the channel inversion policy. Our power control solution substantially decreases the mean end-to-end delays with a marginal increase in throughput also. Finally, we combine bit dropping with power control at the relays which further improves the system performance.

Dans les systèmes de communications sans fil, la transmission de grandes quantités d'information et à faible coût énergétique sont les deux principales questions qui n'ont jamais cessé d'attirer l'attention de la communauté scientifique au cours de la dernière décennie. Récemment, il a été démontré que la communication coopérative est une technique intéressante notamment parce qu'elle permet d'exploiter la diversité spatiale dans le canal sans fil. Cette technique assure une communication robuste et fiable, une meilleure qualité de service (QoS) et rend le concept de coopération prometteur pour les futurs générations de systèmes cellulaires. Typiquement, les QoS sont le taux d'erreurs paquet, le débit et le délai. Ces métriques sont impactées par le délai, induit par les mécanismes de retransmission Hybrid-Automatic Repeat-Request (HARQ) inhérents à la réception d'un paquet erroné et qui a un retard sur la QoS demandée. En revanche, les mécanismes HARQ créent une diversité temporelle. Par conséquent, l'adoption conjointe de la communication coopérative et des protocoles HARQ pourrait s'avérer avantageux pour la conception de schémas cross-layer. Nous proposons tout d'abord une stratégie de maximisation de débit total dans un réseau cellulaire hétérogène. Nous introduisons un algorithme qui alloue la puissance optimale à la station de base (BS) et aux relais, qui à chaque utilisateur attribue de manière optimale les sous-porteuses et les relais. Nous calculons le débit maximal atteignable ainsi que le taux d'utilisateurs sans ressources dans le réseau lorsque le nombre d'utilisateurs actifs varie. Nous comparons les performances de notre algorithme à ceux de la littérature existante, et montrons qu'un gain significatif est atteint sur la capacité globale. Dans un second temps, nous analysons théoriquement le taux d'erreurs paquet, le délai ainsi que l'efficacité de débit des réseaux HARQ coopératifs, dans le canal à évanouissements par blocs. Dans le cas des canaux à évanouissement lents, le délai moyen du mécanisme HARQ n'est pas pertinent à cause de la non-ergodicité du processus. Ainsi, nous nous intéressons plutôt à la probabilité de coupure de délai en présence d'évanouissements lents. La probabilité de coupure de délai est de première importance pour les applications sensibles au délai. Nous proposons une forme analytique de la probabilité de coupure permettant de se passer de longues simulations. Dans la suite de notre travail, nous analysons théoriquement l'efficacité énergétique (bits/joule) dans les réseaux HARQ coopératifs. Nous résolvons ensuite un problème de minimisation de l'énergie dans les réseaux coopératifs en liaison descendante. Dans ce problème, chaque utilisateur possède une contrainte de délai moyen à satisfaire de telle sorte que la contrainte sur la puissance totale du système soit respectée. L'algorithme de minimisation permet d'attribuer à chaque utilisateur la station-relai optimale et sa puissance ainsi que la puissance optimale de la BS afin de satisfaire les contraintes de délai. Les simulations montrent qu'en termes de consommation d'énergie, les techniques assistées par relais prédominent nettement les transmissions directes, dans tout système limité en délai. En conclusion, les travaux proposés dans cette thèse peuvent promettre d'établir des règles fiables pour l'ingénierie et la conception des futures générations de systèmes cellulaires énergétiquement efficaces. / In wireless systems, transmitting large amounts of information with low energetic cost are two main issues that have never stopped drawing the attention of the scientific community during the past decade. Later, it has been shown that cooperative communication is an appealing technique that exploits spatial diversity in wireless channel. Therefore, this technique certainly promises a robust and reliable communications, higher quality-of-service (QoS) and makes the cooperation concept attractive for future cellular systems. Typically, the QoS requirements are the packet error rate, throughput and delay. These metrics are affected by the delay, where each erroneous packet is retransmitted several times according to Hybrid-Automatic Repeat-Request (HARQ) mechanism inducing a delay on the demanded QoS but a temporal diversity is created. Therefore, adopting jointly cooperative communications and HARQ mechanisms could be beneficial for designing cross-layer schemes. First, a new rate maximization strategy, under heterogeneous data rate constraints among users is proposed. We propose an algorithm that allocates the optimal power at the base station (BS) and relays, assigns subcarriers and selects relays. The achievable data rate is investigated as well as the average starvation rate in the network when the load, i.e. the number of active users in the network, is increasing. It showed a significant gain in terms of global capacity compared to literature. Second, in block fading channel, theoretical analyses of the packet error rate, delay and throughput efficiency in relayassisted HARQ networks are provided. In slow fading channels, the average delay of HARQ mechanisms w.r.t. the fading states is not relevant due to the non-ergodic process of the fading channel. The delay outage is hence invoked to deal with the slow fading channel and is defined as the probability that the average delay w.r.t. AWGN channel exceeds a predefined threshold. This criterion has never been studied in literature, although being of importance for delay sensitive applications in slow fading channels. Then, an analytical form of the delay outage probability is proposed which might be useful to avoid lengthy simulations. These analyses consider a finite packet length and a given modulation and coding scheme (MCS) which leads to study the performance of practical systems. Third, a theoretical analysis of the energy efficiency (bits/joule) in relay-assisted HARQ networks is provided. Based on this analysis, an energy minimization problem in multiuser relayassisted downlink cellular networks is investigated. Each user has an average delay constraint to be satisfied such that a total power constraint in the system is respected. The BS is assumed to have only knowledge about the average channel statistics but no instantaneous channel state information (CSI). Finally, an algorithm that jointly allocates the optimal power at BS, the relay stations and selects the optimal relay in order to satisfy the delay constrains of users is proposed. The simulations show the improvement in terms of energy consumption of relay-assisted techniques compared to nonaided transmission in delay-constrained systems. Hence, the work proposed in this thesis can give useful insights for engineering rules in the design of the next generation energyefficient cellular systems.

Avec la croissance rapide des appareils et des applications mobiles, les besoins en débit et en connectivité dans les réseaux sans fil augmentent rapidement. Il est prouvé que les communications coopératives peuvent augmenter significativement l’efficacité spectrale et la fiabilité des transmissions entre les nœuds extrémaux. Le concept de coopération dans un réseau sans fil compte parmi les sujets de recherche les plus actifs en télécommunications, le but étant d'identifier les stratégies de coopération qui maximiseraient les gains en efficacité spectrale et en puissance d'émission. Pour coopérer, les nœuds du réseau partagent leurs ressources (énergie, bande de fréquence, etc. ...) pour améliorer mutuellement leurs transmissions et leurs réceptions. Dans les réseaux sans fil avec relais, les relais sont des nœuds dédiés à améliorer la qualité de la communication entre les nœuds sources et destination.Dans la première partie de la thèse, nous nous concentrons sur un réseau sans fil avec relais spécifique où l'ensemble de sources (mobiles) veulent communiquer leurs messages à une destination commune (station de base) avec l'aide d'un ensemble de relais (contexte cellulaire, sens montant). Nous étudions, sur les plans théorique et pratique, un schéma coopératif dans lequel les relais, après une durée d'écoute fixée a priori, essayent de décoder les messages des sources et commencent à transmettre des signaux utiles pour ceux qui sont décodés correctement. Ces signaux utiles sont le résultat d'un codage canal-réseau conjoint.Une des limitations du système coopératif précédent est précisément que le temps d'écoute des relais est figé et ne peut pas être adapté à la qualité fluctuante (aléatoire) des liens instantanés sources-relais. Pour pallier cette difficulté, nous proposons et analysons, dans une seconde partie de la thèse, un schéma de coopération plus avancé où le temps d'écoute de chaque relais peut être dynamique. Dans ces conditions, un relais bénéficiant d'une meilleure qualité de réception des sources peut commencer à coopérer plus tôt que d'autres relais ayant une qualité de réception moindre.Enfin, dans la troisième et dernière partie de la thèse, nous considérons la présence d'une information de retour limitée (limited feedback) entre la destination et les sources et les relais, et tentons de caractériser l'efficacité spectrale d'un tel système. / With the rapid growth of wireless technologies, devices and mobile applications, the quest of high throughput and omnipresent connectivity in wireless networks increases rapidly as well. It is well known that cooperation increases significantly the spectral efficiency (coding gain) and the reliability (diversity gain) of the transmission between the nodes. The concept of cooperation in wireless relays network is still one of the most active research topics in wireless communication, scientists are still searching for the optimal cooperation strategies that make the possible gains at the maximum. Cooperation results when nodes in a network share their power and/or bandwidth resources to mutually enhance their transmissions and receptions. In wireless relay networks, the relays are special nodes that are used to improve the quality of communication between the source nodes and the destination nodes. In particular, the use of relays guarantees more efficient and reliable networks. In this work, we focus on a special wireless relay network where a set of sources (mobiles) want to communicate their messages to a common destination (base station) with the help of a set of relaysAt the beginning of this work, we focused on the cooperative scheme where the relay, after a fixed portion of time, tries to understand (decode) the source’s messages and forwards helpful signals for the correctly decoded ones. One of the limitations of the previous cooperative scheme is the fixe listening time of the relays, which cannot be adapted to the quality of the instantaneous sources-relays links. To solve this problem we propose a more advanced cooperative scheme where the listening time of each relay can be dynamic and not fixed in advanced. So the relay that has strong links with the sources can start cooperating earlier than the other relays with weak links. Currently, we are investigating other directions of possible improvements, for example, how can we use feedback signals to improve the efficiency of the network.

No description available.

[pt] Em redes sem fio, o desvanecimento do sinal causado pela propagação por caminhos múltiplos pode ser mitigado através do uso de diversidade cooperativa [1–3]. Neste contexto, esquemas de seleção de repetidores são essenciais por causa de seu alto desempenho [4–6]. Esta tese é focada no desenvolvimento de técnicas de seleção de repetidores, que utilizam buffers. Como primeira contribuição, apresentamos uma estrutura de chaveamento para sistemas de repetidores MIMO em que um nó de origem pode transmitir diretamente para um nó de destino ou auxiliado por repetidores. Em particular, apresentamos uma nova técnica de seleção de repetidores baseada no chaveamento e seleção do melhor canal, denominada Switched Max-Link, que faz uso do critério de seleção Maximum Minimum Distance (MMD). Como segunda contribuição, apresentamos uma estratégia de seleção de repetidores para sistemas cooperativos de múltiplas antenas que são auxiliados por um nó processador central, em que um cluster formado por dois usuários é selecionado para transmitir simultaneamente um ao outro com a ajuda de repetidores. Em particular, apresentamos uma nova estratégia de seleção de repetidores Multi-Way com base na seleção do melhor link, explorando o uso de buffers e codificação de rede em camada física (PLNC), denominada Multi-Way Buffer-Aided Max-Link (MW-Max-Link). Como terceira contribuição, apresentamos uma estrutura de uplink dirigida por nuvem para sistemas de repetidores Multi-Way de múltiplas antenas, que ajuda na detecção conjunta de símbolos na nuvem, onde os usuários são selecionados para transmitir simultaneamente uns aos outros auxiliados por repetidores. Em particular, desenvolvemos um novo protocolo de seleção de repetidores Multi-Way com base na seleção do melhor link, explorando o uso de buffers em nuvem e PLNC, denominado Multi-Way Cloud-Driven Best-User-Link (MWC-Best-User-Link). É realizada uma análise das técnicas propostas e existentes em termos de custo computacional, probabilidade de erro de pareamento, soma das taxas e atraso médio e simulações são empregadas para avaliar o desempenho dessas técnicas. / [en] In wireless networks, signal fading caused by multipath propagation can be mitigated through the use of cooperative diversity [1–3]. In this context, relay selection schemes are key because of their high performance [4–6]. Thus, this thesis is focused on developing relay selection techniques, that uses buffers. In this work, as a first contribution, we present a switched relaying framework for multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) relay systems where a source node may transmit directly to a destination node or aided by relays equipped with buffers. In particular, we develop a novel relay selection protocol based on switching and the selection of the best link, denoted as Switched Max-Link, that uses the novel Maximum Minimum Distance (MMD) relay selection criterion. After that, as a second contribution, we present a relay-selection strategy for multi-way cooperative multi-antenna systems that are aided by a central processor node, where a cluster formed by two users is selected to simultaneously transmit to each other with the help of relays. In particular, we present a novel multi-way relay selection strategy based on the selection of the best link, exploiting the use of buffers and physical-layer network coding (PLNC), that is called Multi-Way Buffer-Aided Max-Link (MW-Max-Link). Moreover, as a third contribution, we present a cloud-driven uplink framework for multi-way multiple-antenna relay systems which aids joint symbol detection in the cloud and where users are selected to simultaneously transmit to each other aided by relays. In particular, we develop a novel multi-way relay selection protocol based on the selection of the best link, exploiting the use of cloud buffers and PLNC, denoted as Multi-Way Cloud- Driven Best-User-Link (MWC-Best-User-Link). An analysis of the proposed and existing techniques in terms of computational cost, pairwise error probability, sum-rate and average delay is carried out. Simulations are then employed to evaluate the performance of these techniques.

A evolução tecnológica das redes de telecomunicações sem fio permite que organizações de redes mais inteligentes sejam vislumbradas. É possível imaginar um sistema de telefonia formado por dispositivos móveis autônomos que não necessite de nenhuma infraestrutura pré-estabelecida para trocar informações com seus vizinhos, de acordo com o alcance do raio de transmissão. Assim, as informações poderiam ser repassadas de nó em nó, formando uma rede de múltiplos saltos. A ausência de uma entidade central também poderia melhorar a tolerância a falhas do sistema, principalmente por gerar uma redundância de caminhos possíveis entre os nós. Analisamos o desempenho desse sistema em diferentes cenários e a sensibilidade à variação de parâmetros como o raio de transmissão, interferências, a quantidade de nós e número de saltos máximo permitido (TTL), e testamos estratégias de comunicação com raio fixo, raio variável, número de vizinhos mínimo e etc., através de modelagem e simulação baseada em agentes. De maneira geral, a estratégia de transmissão com raio variável apresentou a melhor taxa de mensagens recebidas e a menor média de saltos até o destino, porém com maior nível de energia do sistema. A estratégia de raio fixo apresentou a menor energia total gasta pelo sistema para enviar as mensagens, porém, com uma taxa menor de mensagens recebidas. Além disso, avaliamos que as principais causas de perdas de pacotes estão associadas com o aumento da mobilidade, a redução do TTL e as interferências, sendo que cada uma contribui mais ou menos de acordo com o cenário estudado. / The technological development of Wireless Networks leads to more intelligent networks structures. One can imagine a mobile data system consisting of autonomous mobile devices that do not require any pre-established infrastructure to exchange information one with another, limited mainly by the transmission radius. Thus, data could be forwarded from node to node, forming a multihop network. The absence of a central entity could also improve fault tolerance by allowing redundant paths for nodes to communicate. We analyzed the performance of the system in different scenarios and system behavior regarding parameters variations such as transmission radius, interferences, the number of nodes and maximum allowed number of hops (TTL), and tested communication strategies with fixed radius, variable radius, minimum number of neighbors to transmit, etc., through modeling and simulation-based agents. In general, variable radius strategy had the best rate of incoming messages and the lowest average number of hops to the destination. However it presented the higher level of system energy. In one hand, fixed radius strategy presented the lowest total energy expended by the system to send messages, but, in the other hand, the rate of incoming messages was lower. Furthermore, we discovered the main causes of packet losses are associated with increased mobility, reducing the TTL and interference, each of which contributes more or less in accordance with the scenario.

A evolução tecnológica das redes de telecomunicações sem fio permite que organizações de redes mais inteligentes sejam vislumbradas. É possível imaginar um sistema de telefonia formado por dispositivos móveis autônomos que não necessite de nenhuma infraestrutura pré-estabelecida para trocar informações com seus vizinhos, de acordo com o alcance do raio de transmissão. Assim, as informações poderiam ser repassadas de nó em nó, formando uma rede de múltiplos saltos. A ausência de uma entidade central também poderia melhorar a tolerância a falhas do sistema, principalmente por gerar uma redundância de caminhos possíveis entre os nós. Analisamos o desempenho desse sistema em diferentes cenários e a sensibilidade à variação de parâmetros como o raio de transmissão, interferências, a quantidade de nós e número de saltos máximo permitido (TTL), e testamos estratégias de comunicação com raio fixo, raio variável, número de vizinhos mínimo e etc., através de modelagem e simulação baseada em agentes. De maneira geral, a estratégia de transmissão com raio variável apresentou a melhor taxa de mensagens recebidas e a menor média de saltos até o destino, porém com maior nível de energia do sistema. A estratégia de raio fixo apresentou a menor energia total gasta pelo sistema para enviar as mensagens, porém, com uma taxa menor de mensagens recebidas. Além disso, avaliamos que as principais causas de perdas de pacotes estão associadas com o aumento da mobilidade, a redução do TTL e as interferências, sendo que cada uma contribui mais ou menos de acordo com o cenário estudado. / The technological development of Wireless Networks leads to more intelligent networks structures. One can imagine a mobile data system consisting of autonomous mobile devices that do not require any pre-established infrastructure to exchange information one with another, limited mainly by the transmission radius. Thus, data could be forwarded from node to node, forming a multihop network. The absence of a central entity could also improve fault tolerance by allowing redundant paths for nodes to communicate. We analyzed the performance of the system in different scenarios and system behavior regarding parameters variations such as transmission radius, interferences, the number of nodes and maximum allowed number of hops (TTL), and tested communication strategies with fixed radius, variable radius, minimum number of neighbors to transmit, etc., through modeling and simulation-based agents. In general, variable radius strategy had the best rate of incoming messages and the lowest average number of hops to the destination. However it presented the higher level of system energy. In one hand, fixed radius strategy presented the lowest total energy expended by the system to send messages, but, in the other hand, the rate of incoming messages was lower. Furthermore, we discovered the main causes of packet losses are associated with increased mobility, reducing the TTL and interference, each of which contributes more or less in accordance with the scenario.

Cooperative relay communication is a promising means of wireless communication in which cooperation is used to create a virtual transmit array between the source and the destination, thereby providing spatial diversity for combating the fading channel. In this thesis we develop cooperative communication protocols namely the orthogonal amplify-and-forward (OAF), non-orthogonal and orthogonal selection decode-and-forward (NSDF and OSDF) protocols. The diversity-multiplexing gain tradeoff (DMT) of the three protocols is determined and DMT-optimal distributed space-time code constructions are provided. The code construction is based on Cyclic Division Algebras. The codes constructed are sphere decodable and in some instances incur minimum possible delay. Included in our results is the perhaps surprising finding that the OAF and NAF protocols have identical DMT when the time durations of the broadcast and cooperative phases are optimally chosen to suit the respective protocol. Two variants of the NSDF protocol are considered: fixed-NSDF and variable-NSDF protocol. In the variable-NSDF protocol, the fraction of time occupied by the broadcast phase is allowed to vary with multiplexing gain. In the two-relay case, the variable-NSDF protocol is shown to improve on the DMT of the best previously-known static protocol for higher values of multiplexing gain. Our results also establish that the fixed-NSDF protocol has a better DMT than the NAF protocol for any number of relays.

Submitted by Geandra Rodrigues (geandrar@gmail.com) on 2018-04-18T18:31:55Z No. of bitstreams: 1 mateusdelimafilomeno.pdf: 952346 bytes, checksum: 0eb883e1ceabb6c297f58be445761d84 (MD5) / Approved for entry into archive by Adriana Oliveira (adriana.oliveira@ufjf.edu.br) on 2018-04-19T13:28:21Z (GMT) No. of bitstreams: 1 mateusdelimafilomeno.pdf: 952346 bytes, checksum: 0eb883e1ceabb6c297f58be445761d84 (MD5) / Made available in DSpace on 2018-04-19T13:28:21Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 mateusdelimafilomeno.pdf: 952346 bytes, checksum: 0eb883e1ceabb6c297f58be445761d84 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2018 / Esta dissertação tem como objetivo discutir as comunicações cooperativas híbrida e não híbrida aplicadas a sistemas de comunicação de dados em banda larga e em ambientes residenciais. Nesse sentido, o modelo de canal com retransmissor único em dois estágios é investigado para sistemas de comunicação em banda larga através da rede de energia elétrica. Este modelo de canal cooperativo é formado pela concatenação de dois canais com retransmissor único, cobrindo enlaces de comunicação de dados com até dois saltos. Além disso, um modelo de canal híbrido com retransmissor único, utilizando rede elétrica e ar, é analisado para sistemas de comunicação de dados em banda larga em que enlaces de até um salto são considerados. Expressões de taxas de dados alcançáveis ergódicas são derivadas para os modelos de canais cooperativos híbridos e não híbridos, a fim de compará-los. Devido às características de canais e ruído das redes de energia elétrica, os resultados numéricos são baseados em um conjunto de dados constituído por estimativas de canais e medições de ruído cobrindo a faixa de frequência de 1, 7 a 100 MHz e diferentes posições do nó retransmissor. Para os canais sem fio, o modelo HIPERLAN/2 com a mesma largura de banda é utilizado, considerando uma freqüência central de 5 GHz, enquanto o ruído aditivo é considerado branco gaussiano. Com relação aos sistemas de comunicação através da rede energia elétrica, mostra-se que o modelo de canal com retransmissor único em dois estágios é a melhor opção quando o enlace da fonte ao destino encontra-se severamente degradado (por exemplo, alta atenuação de sinal devido à longa distância entre nós fonte e destino e/ou presença de ruído de alta potência). Quando a degradação do canal não é acentuada, o modelo de canal de dois saltos é mais apropriado. Acerca dos sistemas híbridos, constata-se que, quando o retransmissor está no meio do caminho entre fonte e destino, o modelo de canal híbrido com retransmissor único apresenta o melhor desempenho em termos de taxa de dados alcançável ergódica, enquanto o modelo de canal híbrido de um salto oferece os melhores resultados para outros casos. / This dissertation aims to discuss hybrid and non-hybrid cooperative communications applied to in-home broadband data communication systems. In this sense, the two-stage single-relay channel model is investigated for in-home broadband power line communication systems. This cooperative channel model consists of the concatenation of two single-relay channels, covering data communication links with up to two hops. Moreover, a hybrid power line/wireless single-relay channel model is analyzed for broadband data communication systems, considering one-hop links. Ergodic achievable data rate expressions are derived for both hybrid and non-hybrid cooperative channel models in order to compare them. Due to channel and noise characteristics of electric power grids, numerical results are based on a data set constituted by power line channel estimates and additive noise measurements covering the frequency band from 1.7 up to 100 MHz and different relay positions. For wireless channels, the HIPERLAN/2 model with the same bandwidth is used, but at a central frequency of 5 GHz, while the additive noise is considered to be Gaussian white. Regarding only power line communication systems, it is shown that the two-stage single-relay channel model is the best option when the source-to-destination link is severely degraded (e.g., high signal attenuation due to the long distance between source and destination nodes and/or high-power noise presence). When the channel degradation is not severe, the two-hop channel model is more appropriate. Concerning hybrid systems, it is observed that, when the relay is halfway between source and destination nodes, the hybrid single-relay channel model presents the best performance in terms of ergodic achievable data rate, while the hybrid one-hop channel model yields the best results for other cases.