Interference decoding in cellular wireless relay networks with space-time coding

In this paper we propose a cooperative protocol and a symbol decoding algorithm that target improved performance in the presence of inter-cell interference (ICI) in wireless cellular networks. Our scheme uses the wireless signals that interfere at relay nodes located at the cell edge instead of discarding them. The relays are non-regenerative and apply a space-time code (STC) to the interfered signal. Subsequently, the relays broadcast the coded signals. At the destinations the interfered and ST-coded signals are decoded in two stages. First by decoding the STC, and then by applying successive interference cancellation (SIC). Simulation results for Rayleigh fading channel reveal significant throughput benefits even in the low SNR regime. We also present results for a small-scale LTE-based cellular scenario and we compare our scheme against the Coordinated MultiPoint (CoMP) transmission mode of LTE-A that is based on beamforming.