Projet ANR-10-INTB-0302 – FIREFLIES : Relais Flexibles dans des réseaux cellullaires interférents
Programme : Blanc international - Sciences de l'information, de la matière et de l'ingénierie : Matériels et logiciels pour les systèmes, les calculateurs, les communications (Blanc inter SIMI 3) 2010
Année de financement : 2010
Coordinateur du projet : Monsieur Mérouane DEBBAH (ECOLE SUPERIEURE D'ELECTRICITE (SUPELEC))
Partenaires : CentraleSupélec; Imperial University of Peking
Montant : 201225.0 euros
Date de début : 2011
Durée : 36 mois
Résumé : Cooperative communication can be applied to both infrastructure-based networks, such as cellular systems, WLANs (wireless local area networks), WMANs (wireless metropolitan area networks), and infrastructure-less networks, such as MANETs (mobile ad hoc networks), VANETs (vehicular ad hoc networks), and WSNs (wireless sensor networks). With large existing target markets and indisputable advantages, cooperative communication is one of the best opportunities today for high impact research in the area of wireless communications. As such, this emerging research area has spurred tremendous excitement within the academia and industry circles and resulted in a surge of research papers over the last few years. 
In order to cater for the increasing demand for higher data rate and robustness, a new form of cellular network architecture has emerged recently as a subject of great interest described by a variety of problems: 
•	Denser and denser deployment with low, aggressive frequency reuse factor is required. 
•	Multiple-antenna (Multiple-Input Multiple-Output, MIMO) transmission techniques are used to provide high capacity and robust links. 
•	Multiple-user communication is about to be developed to exploit the available spatial degrees of freedom in an efficient manner, especially with the introduction of MIMO technology. 
•	Relay-aided systems will become a reality as a means to improve network coverage, data reliability, and ultimately user satisfaction. 
The convergence of these developments appears to have  huge potential to boost the network throughput to a whole new level. Meanwhile, the challenging problems of inter-cell interference and indoor coverage, when all users share the same frequency band, do remain and will become the main barriers to higher data rates. The possibility of exploiting relay stations to reinforce signal and to mitigate interference, as well as that of revealing new modes of relay communication, opens up a wide array of research problems. Clearly, this involves all the problems encountered in cellular networks plus many more. 
Although abundant amount of information-theoretic results on relay-aided communications exist, translating the promises of these results into practical engineering solutions has remained extremely challenging. The most significant obstacles to overcome are 
•	To understand the fundamental information-theoretic limits of multiuser relay-aided communication for realistic systems; 
•	To develop efficient codes and strategies with reasonable complexity from a practical point of view; 
•	To jointly design the physical (PHY) and medium access control (MAC) layers in order to optimize the overall performance and to integrate into existing infrastructure in a meaningful way. 
Since these three problems are intertwined, there is a need for a truly multi-disciplinary and comprehensive approach to relay-aided communication, which would draw on the theoretical analysis of practically relevant information-theoretic wireless models to guide the design of efficient coding schemes and relaying strategies. 
This project brings together two teams expert in the domain, with established European and international recognition: Supélec (SUP), France and Peking University (PKU), China. The teams have complementary areas of expertise that encompass information theory, coding theory, wireless communications and networking, and cross-layer optimization, which all are particularly relevant for the project. Obtaining significant support is of primal importance as it will allow both teams to attract talented students and post-docs and to reinforce their position at the forefront of this domain.