Wireless Communications

We develop and analyze space-time coded cooperative diversity protocols for combating multipath fading across multiple protocol layers in a wireless network. The protocols exploit spatial diversity available among a collection of distributed terminals that relay messages for one another in such a manner that the destination terminal can average the fading, even though it is unknown a priori which terminals will be involved. In particular, a source initiates transmission to its destination, and many relays potentially receive the transmission. Those terminals that can fully decode the transmission utilize a space-time code to cooperatively relay to the destination. We demonstrate that these protocols achieve full spatial diversity in the number of cooperating terminals, not just the number of decoding relays, and can be used effectively for higher spectral efficiencies than repetition-based schemes. We discuss issues related to space-time code design for these protocols, emphasizing codes that readily allow for appealing distributed versions.

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Distributed space-time-coded protocols for exploiting cooperative diversity in wireless networks

Cooperative diversity has been recently proposed as a way to form virtual antenna arrays that provide dramatic gains in slow fading wireless environments. However, most of the proposed solutions require distributed space-time coding algorithms, the careful design of which is left for future investigation if there is more than one cooperative relay. We propose a novel scheme that alleviates these problems and provides diversity gains on the order of the number of relays in the network. Our scheme first selects the best relay from a set of M available relays and then uses this "best" relay for cooperation between the source and the destination. We develop and analyze a distributed method to select the best relay that requires no topology information and is based on local measurements of the instantaneous channel conditions. This method also requires no explicit communication among the relays. The success (or failure) to select the best available path depends on the statistics of the wireless channel, and a methodology to evaluate performance for any kind of wireless channel statistics, is provided. Information theoretic analysis of outage probability shows that our scheme achieves the same diversity-multiplexing tradeoff as achieved by more complex protocols, where coordination and distributed space-time coding for M relay nodes is required, such as those proposed by Laneman and Wornell (2003). The simplicity of the technique allows for immediate implementation in existing radio hardware and its adoption could provide for improved flexibility, reliability, and efficiency in future 4G wireless systems.

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A simple Cooperative diversity method based on network path selection

Transmit diversity generally requires more than one antenna at the transmitter. However, many wireless devices are limited by size or hardware complexity to one antenna. Recently, a new class of methods called cooperative communication has been proposed that enables single-antenna mobiles in a multi-user environment to share their antennas and generate a virtual multiple-antenna transmitter that allows them to achieve transmit diversity. This article presents an overview of the developments in this burgeoning field.

Cooperative communication in wireless networks

Coding strategies that exploit node cooperation are developed for relay networks. Two basic schemes are studied: the relays decode-and-forward the source message to the destination, or they compress-and-forward their channel outputs to the destination. The decode-and-forward scheme is a variant of multihopping, but in addition to having the relays successively decode the message, the transmitters cooperate and each receiver uses several or all of its past channel output blocks to decode. For the compress-and-forward scheme, the relays take advantage of the statistical dependence between their channel outputs and the destination's channel output. The strategies are applied to wireless channels, and it is shown that decode-and-forward achieves the ergodic capacity with phase fading if phase information is available only locally, and if the relays are near the source node. The ergodic capacity coincides with the rate of a distributed antenna array with full cooperation even though the transmitting antennas are not colocated. The capacity results generalize broadly, including to multiantenna transmission with Rayleigh fading, single-bounce fading, certain quasi-static fading problems, cases where partial channel knowledge is available at the transmitters, and cases where local user cooperation is permitted. The results further extend to multisource and multidestination networks such as multiaccess and broadcast relay channels.

Cooperative strategies and capacity theorems for relay networks

When mobiles cannot support multiple antennas due to size or other constraints, conventional space-time coding cannot be used to provide uplink transmit diversity. To address this limitation, the concept of cooperation diversity has been introduced, where mobiles achieve uplink transmit diversity by relaying each other's messages. A particularly powerful variation of this principle is coded cooperation. Instead of a simple repetition relay, coded cooperation partitions the codewords of each mobile and transmits portions of each codeword through independent fading channels. This paper presents two extensions to the coded cooperation framework. First, we increase the diversity of coded cooperation in the fast-fading scenario via ideas borrowed from space-time codes. We calculate bounds for the bit- and block-error rates to demonstrate the resulting gains. Second, since cooperative coding contains two code components, it is natural to apply turbo codes to this framework. We investigate the application of turbo codes in coded cooperation and demonstrate the resulting gains via error bounds and simulations.

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Coded cooperation in wireless communications: space-time transmission and iterative decoding

Motivated by the recent works on the relay channel and cooperative diversity, this letter introduces coded cooperation, where cooperation is achieved through channel coding methods instead of a direct relay or repetition. Each codeword is partitioned into two subsets that are transmitted from the user's and partner's antennas, respectively. Coded cooperation achieves impressive gains compared to a non-cooperative system while maintaining the same information rate, transmit power, and bandwidth. We develop bounds on BER and FER and illustrate the advantage of coded cooperation under a number of different scenarios.

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Diversity through coded cooperation

We propose a new user cooperation scheme for wireless communications in which we combine cooperation with existing channel coding methods. Simulation results show a significant improvement in the BER for both users, even when the channel between them is poor, or when they have significantly different channel qualities to the base station.

Cooperation diversity through coding

Cooperative communication is an emerging paradigm where multiple mobiles share their resources (bandwidth and power) to achieve better overall performance. Coded cooperation is a mechanism where cooperation is combined with-and operates through-channel coding, as opposed to the repetition-based methods. This work develops expressions for outage probability of coded cooperation. In this work, each node acts as both a data source as well as a relay, i.e., only active (transmitting) nodes are available to assist other nodes, and each node operates under overall (source + relay) power and bandwidth constraints. Outage expressions confirm that full diversity is achieved by coded cooperation. This shows that despite superficial similarities, coded cooperation is distinct from decode-and-forward, which has been shown to have diversity one. The outage probability expressions developed in this work characterize coded performance at various rates. Furthermore, outage probabilities yield bounds that are arguably more insightful than the bit-error rate (BER) results previously available for coded cooperation. Numerical comparisons shed light on the relative merits of coded cooperation and various repetition-based methods, under various inter-user and uplink channel conditions.

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T.E. Hunter

Papers

Cooperative communication in wireless networks

Coded cooperation in wireless communications: space-time transmission and iterative decoding

Diversity through coded cooperation

Cooperation diversity through coding

Outage analysis of coded cooperation