Cooperative communications by pooling available resources—for example, power and bandwidth—across the network, is a distributed solution for providing robust wireless transmission. Motivated by contemporary applications in multi-hop transmission and ad hoc networks, the classical three-node relay channel (RC) consisting of a source–destination pair and a relay node has received a renewed attention. One of the crucial aspects of the communication over relay networks (RNs) is the design of proper relaying protocols; that is, how the relay should take part in the transmission to meet a certain quality of service. In this dissertation, we address the design of reliable transmission strategies and quantification of the associated transmission rates over RNs. We consider three canonical examples of RNs: the classical RC, the multiple-access RC (MARC) and the two-way RC.We also investigate the three-node RC and MARC with state. The capacity of the aforementioned RNs is an open problem in general except for some special cases. In the thesis, we derive various capacity bounds, through which we also identify the capacity of some new classes of RNs. In particular, we introduce the class of state-decoupled RNs and prove that the noisy network coding is capacity achieving under certain conditions. In the thesis, we also study the effect of the memory length on the capacity of RNs. The investigated relaying protocols in the thesis can be categorized into two groups: protocols with a finite relay memory and those with infinite relay memory requirement. In particular, we consider the design of instantaneous relaying (also referred to as memoryless relaying) in which the output of the relay depends solely on the presently received signal at the relay. For optimizing the relay function, we present several algorithms constructed based on grid search and variational methods. Among other things, we surprisingly identify some classes of semi-deterministic RNs for which a properly constructed instantaneous relaying strategy achieves the capacity. We also show that the capacity of RNs can be increased by allowing the output of the relay to depend on the past received signals as well the current received signal at the relay. As an example, we propose a hybrid digital–analog scheme that outperforms the cutset upper bound for strictly causal relaying. / <p>QC 20110909</p>

Dans cette thèse, les réseaux coopératifs sont étudiés sous cette hypothèse que la source est incertain par rapport le canal en opération. Dans le premier chapitre, des stratégies coopératives sont développées pour les canaux à relais simultanés (SRC) lesquelles se composent d'un ensemble de deux canaux à relais parmi lesquels le canal en opération est choisi. Cela est équivalent au canal de diffusion à relais (BRC). Les bornes sur la région de capacité de BRC général sont dérivées. Les résultats de capacité sont obtenus pour les cas particuliers du canal à relais simultané semi-dégradé et dégradé Gaussien. Dans le deuxième chapitre, le canal à relais composite est considéré où le canal est tiré aléatoirement d'un ensemble de la distribution conditionnelle. Le débit est fixé en dépit du canal actuel et la probabilité d'erreur (EP) asymptotique est caractérisée. Une nouvelle stratégie de codage sélectif (SCS) est introduit permettant aux relais de choisir -selon leur mesurage du canal – la meilleur schéma de codage entre Décoder-et-Transmettre (DF) et Comprimer-et-Transmettre (CF). Les théorèmes de codage de réseau bruit généralisées sont démontrés pour le cas de réseau unicast général où les relais utilisent soit DF soit CF. Dans le troisième chapitre, le spectre asymptotique de EP est introduit en tant que nouvelle mesure de performance pour réseaux composites. Il est démontré que chaque code avec le débit hors de la borne cut-set, abouti à EP égal à un et le spectre asymptotique de EP coïncide avec la probabilité d'outage pour les réseaux satisfaisant la converse forte. / In this thesis, cooperative networks are studied under the assumption that the source is uncertain about the channel in operation. In the first chapter, cooperative strategies are developed for simultaneous relay channels (SRC) which consist of a set of two single relay channels out of which the channel in operation is chosen. This is equivalent to the broadcast relay channel (BRC). Bounds on the capacity region of the general BRC with two helper relays are derived. Capacity results are obtained for specific cases of semi-degraded and degraded Gaussian simultaneous relay channels. In the second chapter, the composite relay channel is considered where the channel is randomly drawn from a set of conditional distributions according to a given distribution. The transmission rate is fixed regardless of the current channel and the asymptotic error probability (EP) is characterized. A novel selective coding strategy (SCS) is introduced which enables relays to select –based on their channel measurement– the best coding scheme between Compress-and-Forward (CF) and Decode-and-Forward (DF). Generalized Noisy Network Coding theorems are shown for the case of unicast general networks where the relays use either DF or CF scheme. In the third chapter, the asymptotic behavior of EP is studied for composite multiterminal networks. The asymptotic spectrum of EP is introduced as a novel performance measure for composite networks. It is shown that every code with rate outside cut-set bound, yields EP equal to one and for the networks satisfying strong converse condition, the asymptotic spectrum of EP coincides with the outage probability.