  A linear mesh network is considered in which a single user per cell
communicates to a local base station via a dedicated relay (two-hop
communication). Exploiting the possibly relevant inter-cell channel gains, rate
splitting with successive cancellation in both hops is investigated as a
promising solution to improve the rate of basic single-rate communications.
Then, an alternative solution is proposed that attempts to improve the
performance of the second hop (from the relays to base stations) by cooperative
transmission among the relay stations. The cooperative scheme leverages the
common information obtained by the relays as a by-product of the use of rate
splitting in the first hop. Numerical results bring insight into the conditions
(network topology and power constraints) under which rate splitting, with
possible relay cooperation, is beneficial. Multi-cell processing (joint
decoding at the base stations) is also considered for reference.
