Patent ID: 8031605

Claim:
A system comprising: a source terminal configured to generate and send a wireless communication to a destination terminal across at least one of a plurality of relay terminals that are between the source terminal and the destination terminal; and a cluster determination engine coupled to the source terminal, wherein the cluster determination engine is configured to compute a threshold data rate, C, based on a number of hops, N, and based on a transmission power constraint, wherein the cluster determination engine is further configured to determine a proposed route for the wireless communication from the source terminal to the destination terminal according to the computed threshold data rate, C, and wherein the cluster determination engine is further configured to: compute the threshold data rate, C, further based on a derivative of the threshold data rate, C, over the number of hops, N; determine a proposed number of hops, N*, based on the computed threshold data rate, C; determine a proposed hop distance, D/N, based on the proposed number of hops, N*, wherein D is the distance between the source terminal and the destination terminal and N is the number of hops; determine the route further based on the proposed hop distance, D/N; compute a signal-to-noise ratio, Γ, based on the proposed number of hops, N*; and partition the source terminal, the plurality of relay terminals, and the destination terminal into a plurality of clusters based on the determination of the proposed hop distance, D/N.