Editorial Cooperative Communications in Wireless Networks | Hindawi Publishing Corporation EURASIP Journal on Wireless Communications and Networking Volume 2009 Article ID 768314 2 pages doi 2009 768314 Editorial Cooperative Communications in Wireless Networks Laura Cottatellucci 1 Xavier Mestre 2 Erik G. Larsson 3 and Alejandro Ribeiro4 1 Department of Mobile Communications Eurecom 06904 Sophia Antipolis cedex France 2Centre Tecnol gic de Telecomunicacions de Catalunya CTTC 08860 Barcelona Spain 3 Division of Communication Systems Department of Electrical Engineering Linkoping University 581 83 Linkoping Sweden 4 Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering University of Minnesota Minneapolis MN 55455 USA Correspondence should be addressed to Xavier Mestre Received 7 July 2009 Accepted 7 July 2009 Copyright 2009 Laura Cottatellucci et al. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License which permits unrestricted use distribution and reproduction in any medium provided the original work is properly cited. Next-generation wireless networks will go beyond the point-to-point or point-to-multipoint paradigms of classical cellular networks. They will be based on complex interactions where the involved nodes cooperate with one another in order to improve the performance of their own communication and that of the global network. Cooperative communications based on relaying nodes have emerged as a promising approach to increase spectral and power efficiency network coverage and to reduce outage probability. Similarly to multiantenna transceivers relays provide diversity by creating multiple replicas of the signal of interest. By properly coordinating different spatially distributed nodes in a wireless system one can effectively synthesize a virtual antenna array that emulates the operation of a multiantenna transceiver. The demand for new-generation wireless networks has spurred a vibrant flurry of research on cooperative communications during the last .
