Distributed Coherent Group Communications

Wireless communication networks need to support high data rate, low power consumption and extended connectivity over long distances, which may not be feasible with point-to-point transmissions. This paper presents the distributed coherent group communication solution to achieve high power gain, which is in turn translated to improvements in communication range, power efficiency, reliability, and throughput performance. In a network of distant nodes, this multi-layer solution enables groups of communication nodes to coordinate with each other in a distributed manner to form transmitter and receiver clusters, and communicate with each other over long distances. For that purpose, the coherent beamforming protocol (optimized from the transmitter cluster to the receiver cluster) and the clustering protocol (based on the intra-cluster distance) are integrated to perform distributed coherent group communications that improve the power gain significantly relative to point-to-point communications. This solution is shown to outperform other benchmark combinations of beamforming and clustering protocols that are introduced in this paper. Results show that it becomes feasible to improve the network performance significantly with distributed coherent group communications by using the existing single-antenna communication nodes.