Combining Decoded-and-Forwarded Signals in Gaussian Cooperative Channels

The goal of this paper is to investigate the different ways of combining signals that have been decoded-and-forwarded by a bunch of relays. We more deeply look at the case where the relays are in bad reception conditions and the cooperation powers are sufficiently high. In this situation using a conventional MRC severely degrades the receiver performance especially when the number or relays increases. On the other hand the MMSE- and ML-based combiners can almost always extract from their partners some performance improvements