Performance analysis for collaborative decoding with least-reliable-bit exchange over AWGN channels

In collaborative decoding, spatial diversity is achieved by exchanging decoding information among a cluster of physically separated receivers. The least-reliable-bit (LRB) exchange scheme helps collaborative decoding to lower the amount of information that must be exchanged while providing performance close to the maximal-ratio combining technique. In this paper, we approximately evaluate the error performance of the collaborative decoding with the LRB exchange scheme when nonrecursive convolutional codes are used. The Gaussian approximation and union bound are used in the analysis.