ABSTRACT OF THE DISSERTATION Relaying and Scheduling in Interference Limited Wireless Networks By Chandrasekharan Raman

In this dissertation, we address two issues related to communication in interference-limited wireless networks. In the first part of the thesis, we study benefits of deploying inexpensive half-duplex relays in interference-limited cellular system. We study two relaying schemes in a downlink system, users sharing the same frequency band. In the first collaborative relaying scheme, relays help users after they decode the message intended for the user by a collaborative power addition scheme. We evaluate power savings and rate improvement for delivering a common rate for 90 % of users in the system. We then consider power control at the base stations and relays in order to manage the interference. In both cases, the ability of relays to reduce the peak base station transmit power while delivering the baseline rate or alternately to increase the user rate is computed. When power control is employed, the peak power saving is 2.6 dB and the average total power in the system can be reduced by 3 dB. We also observe a 34 % improvement over the baseline in the users common rate. In the second orthogonal relaying scheme, we study a simple scheme where the base station and relays transmit in orthogonal time slots. We find that the performance of the simple orthogonal relayin