| Summary: | Physical-layer cooperation has been demonstrated to vastly improve wireless link
reliability and end-to-end throughput by exploiting spatial diversity. Nevertheless,
its performance in operational networking environments is uncertain. Cooperative
link gains can be potentially diminished by factors such as i) increased transmission
footprint due to the activity of the cooperative relay, ii) non-ideal node location due
to the structure of a planned network, or iii) the inability of cooperation protocols
to recognize the channel's global state, hence leading to increased congestion. In this
work, we identify and evaluate these key factors affecting the performance of cooperative
techniques in small- and large-scale topologies. Our evaluation reveals that
throughput gains from cooperation achieved in atomic, isolated topologies, decrease
significantly when implemented at network-scale scenarios. Furthermore, our study
provides a deeper understanding of the regimes in which cooperation performs poorly,
and can help in the design of effective protocol solutions for such cases.
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