A New Transmission Scheme with Congestion Avoidance

in Wireless Multi-Hop Relay Networks

Wen-Tsuen Chen Tzu-Ming Lin Tsung-Yuan Hsu
Information & Communications Research Laboratories
Institute of Communications Engineering, Industrial Technology Research Institute, Department of Computer Science
National Tsing-Hua University, Institute of Communications Engineering National Tsing-Hua University,
Hsinchu, Taiwan, R.O.C. National Tsing-Hua University, Hsinchu, Taiwan, R.O.C.
wtchen@cs.nthu.edu.tw Hsinchu, Taiwan, R.O.C. mr946314@cs.nthu.edu.tw

tmlin@itri.org.tw

Abstract – Wireless relay networks that adopt multi-hop

transmissions can provide enhanced functionalities to benefit
conventional wireless communications. By deploying a relay station
(RS), a base station (BS) can provide radio access services to a
mobile station (MS) through data relay so as to extend the service
coverage and increase throughput. However, it is evidenced that
packet errors impact throughput and delay significantly in such a
circumstance through some experiments. By analyzing
conventional schemes and related issues, this study proposes a new
relay transmission mechanism to resolve the problems.

I. INTRODUCATION

Broadband wireless communication brings users huge

multimedia services in a convenient way nowadays. The
relaying technology has been proven an enhanced technology Fig. 1. Overview of Relay Transmissions
5
for extending the service coverage and boosting throughput.
4.5 Hop-by-Hop_3-Hop
The first wireless relay system, IEEE 802.16j [1], is under Coupled_3-Hop
End-to-End_3-Hop
4
development currently to realize the wireless relay system and 3.5
Hop-by-Hop_6-Hop
Coupled_6-Hop
End-to-End_6-Hop
provide the feasible features. By deploying relay stations (RS), 3
)c
radio signal can be relayed between a base station (BS) and a se(
yla 2.5
eD
mobile station (MS) so as to extend the service coverage. Since 2

an MS can also receive stronger radio signals from a RS than 1.5

that from a BS, data throughput is enhanced by using advanced 1

coding or modulation schemes. 0.5

In a wireless relay network, multi-hop transmissions 0

10 20 30 40 50
introduce longer delay that impact throughput than PER (%)

conventional one-hop transmissions. The packet error due to
the dynamics of radio conditions in multiple relay links shall
cause the situation worse. Several mechanisms [2][3][4][5] are
proposed to resolve the problem in recent years. These methods
can be divided into three categories: End-to-End, Coupled, and
Hop-by-Hop. Fig.1 illustrates the main aspects of these relay
schemes. One straightforward solution to the problem is
End-to-End relay, in which RSs just repeat the received radio
signal to next station until the reception in end station. In this
case, the multiple physical transmissions along the end-to-end
path between a BS and a MS behave like a single logical
transmission. Coupled relay scheme separates the end-to-end
transmission path into two coupled segments: one is relay path
between the BS and an access RS that MS attaches to, and the
other is access path between the access RS and a MS. The relay
path can be provided with another feature to benefit the
transmission. Hop-by-hop relay scheme slices the end-to-end
transmission path into each independent relay links. The data
are relayed in a hop-by-hop fashion with distributed
hop-by-hop control. It is observed that the performances in
Fig. 2. Packet Delay in Relay Transmissions
packet delay among these relay schemes are affected by packet
error rate (PER) in Fig. 2. No matter in 3-hop or 6-hop relay
scenario, Hop-by-Hop relay shows the best outcome in the
experiment.
However, Hop-by-Hop relay transmission scheme
suffers from a congestion problem. Unpredictable radio
conditions may cause a RS fails in transmitting packets to
subordinate RS and keeps buffering packets sent successfully
from its superordinate RS at the same time. As a result, buffer
overflow problem occurs in the congested RS if the situation
remains unsolved for a period of time.
A Relay ARQ concept [5] is introduced at a time that
multi-hop relay network was just investigated. One of the
salient features is resolving congestion problem by sending of
acknowledgements from receiver to sender. However, it is
noteworthy that Relay ARQ cannot retain an adequate
throughput under bad radio conditions. Buffers in BS are
occupied by those packets that are not acknowledged from
receiver, and BS can neither purge buffer nor initial another

Fig. 3. Congestion Avoidance
transmission. Throughput degrades while transmissions are
blocked in such a case. There is a significant challenge to ease
the congested situation without blocking entire relay
transmissions.
II. NEW RELAY TRANSMISSION
In this lecture, a relay transmission scheme to overcome
the addressed issues is proposed, and throughput enhancement
due to short transmission delay is evidenced in the simulation.
In the proposed scheme, each RS relays packets with
hop-by-hop transmissions in a distributed manner and is
responsible for sending acknowledgements toward sender to
feedback the status of the received packets. After receiving a
notification from subordinate RS, the RS releases the buffer
occupied by the indicated packet. Non-acknowledged packets
are retransmitted to subordinate RS if timer expires. Local
transmissions are initialized by the RS that senses packet error
through the feedback and hold the correct copy of the packet
both. Because the proposed scheme adopts hop-by-hop
transmission with end-to-end feedback and enables local
transmissions, the transmission delay is shortened. Moreover,
transmission delay resulted from end-to-end retransmissions is
reduced by the help of local retransmissions triggered by the
intermediate RSs.
This study also discloses a flow control scheme aims to
resolve the congestion problem in advance. Each RS maintains
a threshold related to the buffer and adjusts the transmitting
rate dynamically. Once packets buffered exceed the threshold,
the RS sends out a “pause” message to its superordinate RS and
notifies this situation to prevent from congestion collapse. After
receiving the message, the superordinate RS suspends
transmitting packets to prevent dropping packets by the
reporting RS. After the congested buffer status relieves, the
reporting RS sends out a “resume” message to continue the
transmission. Fig. 3 illustrates an overview of the operations
proposed.
Simulations for a 3-hop relay network under various
radio conditions are evaluated. Through the simulation, the
trend how PER impacts throughput is showed in Fig. 4. Both
schemes cannot maintain the performance and reduce the
throughput as PER rises. The key thing to notice in this figure
2000
1800
Proposed Scheme
1600
RelayARQ
1400
)s
pb 1200
K
t(u
ph 1000
ugo
hrT 800
600
400
200
0
10 20 30 40 50
PER (%)
Fig. 4. Throughput Comparison
is that throughput degrades more seriously in Relay ARQ
scheme than that in proposed scheme. Compared with relay
ARQ through the experiments on a wide range of radio
conditions, it can be identified that the proposed relay scheme
performs better against PER in multi-hop relay networks.
III. CONCLUSIONS
In this paper, issues of transmission delay and
throughput regarding to multi-hop relay are analyzed and
discussed. Hop-by-Hop transmission concept is advised to keep
lower delay in a wireless relay networks among conventional
relay schemes. Besides, a new relay transmission scheme with
congestion avoidance is developed to maintain adequate
transmission throughput and ease the impact from congestion.
The simulation results also shows more 10%~70% throughputs
enhanced than the surveyed relay scheme under bad radio
conditions.
Even though the proposed scheme can provide better
performances in throughput and transmission delay, there are
still some more issues that should be investigated. For example,
it should be taken into consideration how buffer size within a
BS and RSs impact the transmission throughput and delay
along a relay path. Moreover, Hop-by-Hop relay transmission
brings new challenges to handover process. Delay for
forwarding packets from serving RS to target RS during
handover shall increase with the relay hop counts and interrupt
the services. Content transfer between RSs for intra-BS and
inter-BS cases will also be inspected into next steps.
REFERENCES
[1] “Draft Amendment to IEEE Standard for Local and Metropolitan
Area Networks – Part 16: Air Interface for Fixed and Mobile
Broadband Wireless Access System - Multihop Relay
Specification”, IEEE 802.16j/D6, Jul. 2008.
[2] S. Zou, B. Li, H.Wu, Q.Zhang, W.Zhu and S.Cheng, "A
Relay-Aided Media Access (RAMA) protocol in Multirate
Wireless Networks," in Proc. of IEEE TVT, September 2006.
[3] G. Holland, N. Vaidya and P. Bahl, "A rate-adaptive MAC
protocol for multi-hop wireless networks," in Proc. of ACM
MOBICOM, 2001.
[4] Matthias Lott, "ARQ for Multi-Hop Networks," in Proc. of IEEE
VTC 2005 Fall, September 2005
[5] H. Wiemann, M. Meyer, R. Ludwig and P. Chang, "A Novel
Multi-Hop ARQ Concept," in Proc. of IEEE VTC, Spring, June
2005.
[6] M. Lott, M. Weckerle and M. Siebert, "Scheduling in wireless
multihop networks," in Proc. of SPECTS 4, July 2004.
[7] RFC3366, "Advice to link designers on link Automatic Repeat
request (ARQ)," Network Working Group, August 2002.
 Author Biography:
Wen-Tsuen Chen received the B.S. degree in
nuclear engineering from National Tsing Hua
University, Taiwan, R.O.C., and the M.S. and
Ph.D. degrees in electrical engineering and
computer sciences from University of
California, Berkeley, in 1970, 1973, and 1976,
respectively. He has been with the National Tsing Hua
University since 1976 and is currently a Professor. From 1983
to 1988 he served as the Chairman of the Department of
Computer Science. In 1980, he was a Visiting Professor in the
Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences,
University of California, Berkeley. Since 1988, he has been a
member of the Science and Technology Advisory Office of the
Ministry of Education, R.O.C. From 1992 to 1996, he has been
the Director of the above Advisory Office. He is currently the
Director of the Computer and Communication Research Center,
and the Dean of the College of Electrical Engineering and
Computer Science, National Tsing Hua University. His
research interests include computer networks, wireless Internet,
multimedia communications, and parallel algorithms.
Dr. Chen is an IEEE Fellow, a Research Fellow of the National
Science Council and an Outstanding Scholarship Chair, a
prestigious chair endowed by the Foundation for the
Advancement of Outstanding Scholarship, founded by Nobel
Laureate Dr. Y. T. Lee.

Tzu-Min Lin received the B.S. degree in

computer science from National Tsing Hua
University, Taiwan, R.O.C., and the M.S. in
1999, 2001. His research interests include
computer networks, wireless Internet,
multimedia communications.

Tsung-Yuan Hsu received the B.S. degree in

computer science from Chung Hua
University, and the M.S. from National Tsing
Hua University, Taiwan, R.O.C. in 2005,
2008. His research interests include computer
networks, wireless Internet.