Distributed space-time codes for amplify-and-forward relaying networks

Most research on Distributed Space-Time Block Coding focus on utilizing 2 relaying nodes that are assumed to be permanently available. In the case where higher diversity order is available for utilization, maintaining full-rate become troublesome or the complexity of decoding will be increased significantly. In this paper a distributed full-rate encoding scheme is proposed that will achieve any order of diversity, while maintaining lower complexity. The idea is to adapt an existing code, which is based on a low complexity approach used in conventional Multiple Input Multiple Output systems, to work on an amplify-and-forward relaying network. This will ensure the ability of the system to scale with ease by accommodating any number of relays with minimal overhead. In addition, the method does not require any control-information overhead for the codegeneration coordination process among relay nodes. Simulation results show the effectiveness of this code which retains its full-diversity, full-rate and linear decoding complexity.