Sub-Carrier Coupling for OFDM based AF Multi-Relay Systems

Amplify and forward (AF) is an effective mode for relaying systems with ease for implementation. In a conventional orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) based AF system, relay stations simply amplifies the received signals and forward them to the destination station. Due to the fact that channel transfer function for the first hop (source-relay) and the second hop (relay-destination) may vary a lot, system capacity is limited. This contribution introduces a method named sub-carrier coupling, which couples sub-carriers for the two hops in a certain rule to improve system capacity. Firstly, system with a single relay station and its capacity is discussed, and the coupling scheme to maximize the system capacity is proposed. Then system with multiple relay stations is investigated, and two solutions are proposed. The solution with sub-carrier coupling can bring to much higher capacity since it determines the sub-carrier coupling scheme and assigns relay stations to forward signal for all sub-carriers jointly. Numerical simulation is carried out to show the efficiency of the proposed solutions.