Decode-and-Forward vehicular relaying for 2×2 MIMO LTE-advanced downlink

MIMO is a key technology in improving the performance of wireless communications. Recently the concept of cooperative communication has emerged as a solution to exploit the potential gains of MIMO on a distributed scale. We propose to use cooperative-MIMO links in LTE-A networks where vehicles act as relaying terminals to a designated vehicle using Decode-and-Forward relaying. To maintain orthogonality of signals, a modified Alamouti-based Space-Time Block Coding (STBC) technique is proposed. Our approach allows exploitation of the multiplexing capability and spatial diversity of typical MIMO schemes in distributed way. We further contribute by deriving error rate and diversity gain as a benchmark to assess our analysis and future research studies. Our findings indicate that significant diversity gains and reduced error rates are achievable. As well, a noticeable reduction in the required transmitting power are observed compared to traditional single antenna deployment.