A comprehensive methodology to evaluate the performance of a cooperative wireless network

Abstract

Performance evaluation of a cooperative wireless communication network depends on several parameters. Many of the studies, in fact, take a limited number of performance metrics individually to reach a conclusion about the performance of a network. Besides, in general, some performance metrics might be in conflict. Thus, ignoring the combined effect of all performance criteria in the network may lead to an incorrect conception of the overall communication performance of the network. Therefore, in this study, a comprehensive evaluation methodology in terms of various metrics is proposed to calculate the performance of a cooperative wireless communication network deployment using a real terrain map. The proposed methodology, based on desirability functions, is discussed in terms of signal quality, signal quality with hopping, average number of hopping, hopping duty, and deployment altitude. In addition to individual scores for each performance criterion, an overall performance score is also obtained. Furthermore, the effects of the desirability function's ambition factor, terrain characteristics, and connectivity requirement rate on the score are also presented. The simulation results show that the desirability function-based performance evaluation approach could support a flexible evaluation as well as provide an agreement on the conflicting performance metrics.