Patent ID: 8630310

Claim:
A method performed by a relay node for wireless transmission of layered signals in a relay network, the method comprising: (i) receiving layered signals from a source node, (ii) receiving, from a destination node, a relay allocation parameter to implement a cooperative relay strategy with one or more other relay nodes, and (iii) relaying the layered signals to the destination node using the cooperative relay strategy, wherein the method further comprises, prior to operation (iii), selecting one of a plurality of cooperative relay strategies based on the channel state information available at the relay nodes, which includes selecting orthogonal amplify-and-forward to be performed by every relay node or selective relaying to be performed by a relay node having the largest product of backward and forward channel state information if only backward channel state information is available, or selecting distributed beamforming to be performed by every relay node if backward and forward channel state information for each relay node, but not global channel state information, is available to an associated relay node.