A step toward ad hoc networks: can relays really improve the performance of cellular networks?

Some believe the future of cellular wireless networks could see "cellular ad hoc" networks that use multihop transmission through relays as a means of improving performance of existing cellular systems. We herein consider the question of whether relays can really improve the performance of cellular networks, by comparing a cellular network with no relays to one with relays (with different user distributions) to one with the relays replaced by micro-cell base stations. Metrics such as throughput, delay, number of hops, and cost are discussed.