A New Class of Asynchronous Distributed Space-Time Codes

We propose a new class of C-linear distributed space-time codes for cooperative networks using a decode- and-forward strategy. Our codes achieve full spatial diversity regardless of the relays´ timing offsets. The proposed codes are effective and flexible, enabling use of different signal constellations, transmission rates, numbers of transmit and receive antennas, and different tradeoffs between decoder complexity and overall performance. Furthermore, we extend our framework to handle the case where relays have multiple antennas and propose few examples of the modified code construction.