One possible avenue of future development in wireless
LAN technology is in the area of “cooperative diversity.”
Cooperative diversity can be viewed as somewhat of a
cross between MIMO techniques and mesh networking.
In a cooperative diversity scheme, redundancy in
transmission is achieved in a manner analogous with
diversity transmission in MIMO. However, the redundant
transmission is realized via the cooperation of third party
devices rather than solely from the originating device. In a
cooperative diversity scheme, third parties which can
successfully decode an on-going exchange will effectively
regenerate and relay, with appropriate coding, the original
transmission in order to improve the effective link quality
between the intended parties.
