Transmission in a relay node-based wireless communication system

1. A method of cooperative wireless communication performed at an intermediate node, comprising:

receiving a downlink signal from a first node;

sending an acknowledgment signal to the first node indicating that downlink signal was successfully received;

determining a channel quality measurement (“CQM”) value associated with the downlink signal;

determining if the CQM value does not exceed a second threshold, wherein the second threshold is provided by the first node;

when the CQM value does not exceed the second threshold, improving an integrity of the downlink signal by decoding and encoding the downlink signal to generate a processed downlink signal; and

determining whether to transmit the processed downlink signal to a wireless device based upon the CQM value, and if so, cooperatively transmitting the processed downlink signal with the first node to the wireless device until a second acknowledgement signal is received from the wireless device at the first node or at the intermediate node.

2. The method of claim 1 , wherein the decoding and encoding uses at least one of incremental redundancy and chase combining.

3. The method of claim 1 , the method further comprising demodulating the received downlink signal.

4. The method of claim 1 , wherein determining the channel quality measurement (“CQM”) value uses at least one of a signal strength value of the received downlink signal and a bit error rate (“BER”) value of the received downlink signal.

5. The method of claim 1 , the method further comprising:

monitoring for a re-transmission of the downlink signal from the first node, another node or both;

receiving the re-transmitted downlink signal from the first node, the other node or both; and

combining the received downlink signal with the received re-transmitted downlink signal.

6. The method of claim 1 , the method further comprising applying pre-coding to the processed downlink signal.

7. The method of claim 1 , wherein the first node is a base station and the intermediate node is a remote node (“RN”).

8. A node for wireless communication, comprising:

a processor coupled to a memory containing processor-executable instructions, wherein the processor is operable to:

receive a downlink signal from a first node;

send an acknowledgment signal to the first node indicating that the downlink signal was successfully received;

generate a channel quality measurement (“CQM”) value based upon the downlink signal;

determining if the CQM value does not exceed a second threshold, wherein the second threshold is provided by the first node;

when the CQM value does not exceed the second threshold, improve the integrity of the downlink signal by decoding and encoding the downlink signal to generate a processed signal; and

determine whether to transmit the processed downlink signal to a wireless device based upon the CQM value, and if so, cooperatively transmit the processed downlink signal with the first node to the wireless device until a second acknowledgment is received from the wireless device at the node or the first node.

9. The node of claim 8 , wherein the processor demodulates the downlink signal.

10. The node of claim 8 , wherein the processor is further operable to:

monitor for a re-transmission of the downlink signal from another node;

receive the re-transmitted downlink signal from the other node; and

combine the received downlink signal with the received re-transmitted downlink signal.

11. The node of claim 8 , wherein the first node is a base station and the node is a remote node (“RN”).

12. A node for wireless communication, comprising:

a receiver to receive a downlink signal from a first node and demodulate the received downlink signal to form a pre-processed downlink signal;

a channel quality measurement (“CQM”) processor to generate a channel quality measurement (“CQM”) value associated with the pre-processed downlink signal, to determine if the CQM value exceeds a first threshold, and further to determine if the CQM value exceeds a second threshold, wherein the second threshold is provided by the first node; and

a transmitter to improve the integrity of the pre-processed downlink signal by decoding and encoding the pre-processed downlink signal to form a processed downlink signal, and to cooperatively transmit the processed downlink signal with the first node to a wireless device when the CQM value exceeds the first threshold and the second threshold.

13. The node of claim 12 , wherein the receiver is further operable to receive the downlink signal from another node and combine the received downlink signals.

14. The node of claim 12 , wherein the first node is a base station and the node is a remote node (“RN”).