Terminal relaying offers effective means for realizing machine-type communication (MTC) systems. However, coordinating these relaying terminals (RTs) becomes a cumbersome task as the number of RTs increases. In the absence of channel state information, the efficient utilization of RTs requires a mechanism by which RTs can autonomously assign available resource blocks (RBs) to large numbers of uncoordinated MTC devices with minimal conflicts. Unlike random RB assignments, using prescribed assignment sequences provides an opportunity for obtaining performance gains. However, realizing these gains requires optimizing RB assignments over a large set of sequences. One technique for selecting assignment sequences is based on an iv Table of Contents v List of Figures viii