Cooperative Communications: Hardware, Channel & PHY

4

Regenerative Relaying Techniques

4.1 Introductory Note

4.1.1 Chapter Contents

Analyzing the physical layer performance of a wireless system is vital in understanding, optimizing and synthesizing system parameters. As of 2009, there are several hundreds of highly complex contributions on regenerative PHY layer analysis and design available. This requires us to concentrate on some canonical techniques that can then be applied to other scenarios. For this reason, we proceed in this chapter with the following topics:

• regenerative relaying protocols;
• distributed space–time coding protocols;
• distributed network coding protocols.

Regenerative relaying protocols are realized by relays that regenerate the received signal prior to retransmission. Such regeneration can include sample, demodulate, deccode, etc., as well as any joint combination thereof. Distributed space–time coding protocols, on the other hand, facilitate distributed space–time transmission with the aid of one or several regenerative relays where we assume again that sufficient synchronization is guaranteed. In this book, we will dwell on distributed space–time block, space–time trellis and turbo codes. Finally, we also touch upon the recently emerged advanced topic of distributed network coding, where we will deal with distributed network-channel coding and network coding division multiplexing.

4.1.2 Choice of Notation

Concerning the notation, we will almost exclusively adopt the notation used in the open literature, ...