Bilayer Protograph Codes for Half-Duplex Relay Channels

Despite encouraging advances in the design of relay codes, several important challenges remain. Many of the existing LDPC relay codes are tightly optimized for fixed channel conditions and not easily adapted without extensive re-optimization of the code. Some have high encoding complexity and some need long block lengths to approach capacity. This paper presents a high-performance protograph-based LDPC coding scheme for the half-duplex relay channel that addresses simultaneously several important issues: structured coding that permits easy design, low encoding complexity, embedded structure for convenient adaptation to various channel conditions, and performance close to capacity with a reasonable block length. The application of the coding structure to multi-relay networks is demonstrated. Finally, a simple new methodology for evaluating the end-to-end error performance of relay coding systems is developed and used to highlight the performance of the proposed codes.Comment: Accepted in IEEE Trans. Wireless Com

Self-concatenated code design and its application in power-efficient cooperative communications

In this tutorial, we have focused on the design of binary self-concatenated coding schemes with the help of EXtrinsic Information Transfer (EXIT) charts and Union bound analysis. The design methodology of future iteratively decoded self-concatenated aided cooperative communication schemes is presented. In doing so, we will identify the most important milestones in the area of channel coding, concatenated coding schemes and cooperative communication systems till date and suggest future research directions

Distributed Self-Concatenated Coding for Cooperative Communication

In this paper, we propose a power-efficient distributed binary self-concatenated coding scheme using iterative decoding (DSECCC-ID) for cooperative communications. The DSECCC-ID scheme is designed with the aid of binary extrinsic information transfer (EXIT) charts. The source node transmits self-concatenated convolutional coded (SECCC) symbols to both the relay and destination nodes during the first transmission period. The relay performs SECCC-ID decoding, where it mayor may not encounter decoding errors. It then reencodes the information bits using a recursive systematic convolutional (RSC) code during the second transmission period. The resultant symbols transmitted from the source and relay nodes can be viewed as the coded symbols of a three-component parallel concatenated encoder. At the destination node, three-component DSECCC-ID decoding is performed. The EXIT chart gives us an insight into operation of the distributed coding scheme, which enables us to significantly reduce the transmit power by about 3.3 dB in signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) terms, as compared with a noncooperative SECCC-ID scheme at a bit error rate (BER) of 10-5. Finally, the proposed system is capable of performing within about 1.5 dB from the two-hop relay-aided network’s capacity at a BER of 10-5 , even if there may be decoding errors at the relay

Dispensing with channel estimation: differentially modulated cooperative wireless communications

As a benefit of bypassing the potentially excessive complexity and yet inaccurate channel estimation, differentially encoded modulation in conjunction with low-complexity noncoherent detection constitutes a viable candidate for user-cooperative systems, where estimating all the links by the relays is unrealistic. In order to stimulate further research on differentially modulated cooperative systems, a number of fundamental challenges encountered in their practical implementations are addressed, including the time-variant-channel-induced performance erosion, flexible cooperative protocol designs, resource allocation as well as its high-spectral-efficiency transceiver design. Our investigations demonstrate the quantitative benefits of cooperative wireless networks both from a pure capacity perspective as well as from a practical system design perspective

Interleaving Gains for Receive Diversity Schemes of Distributed Turbo Codes in Wireless Half–Duplex Relay Channels

This paper proposes the interleaving gain in two different distributed turbo-coding schemes: Distributed Turbo Codes (DTC) and Distributed Multiple Turbo Codes (DMTC) for half-duplex relay system as an extension of our previous work on turbo coding interleaver design for direct communication channel. For these schemes with half-duplex constraint, the source node transmits its information with the parity bit sequence(s) to both the relay and the destination nodes during the first phase. The relay received the data from the source and process it by using decode and forward protocol. For the second transmission period, the decoded systematic data at relay is interleaved and re-encoded by a Recursive Systematic Convolutional (RSC) encoder and forwarded to the destination. At destination node, the signals received from the source and relay are processed by using turbo log-MAP iterative decoding for retrieving the original information bits. We demonstrate via simulations that the interleaving gain has a large effect with DTC scheme when we use only one RSC encoder at both the source and relay with best performance when using Modified Matched S-Random (MMSR) interleaver. Furthermore, by designing a Chaotic Pseudo Random Interleaver (CPRI) as an outer interleaver at the source node instead of classical interleavers, our scheme can add more secure channel conditions

Network coded modulation for two-way relaying

Network coding compresses multiple traffic flows with the aid low-complexity algebraic operations, hence holds the potential of significantly improving both the power and bandwidth efficiency of wireless networks. In this contribution, the novel concept of Network Coded Modulation (NCM) is proposed for jointly performing network coding and modulation in bi-directional/duplex relaying. Each receiver is colocated with a transmitter and hence has prior knowledge of the message intended for the distant receiver. As in classic coded modulation, the Euclidian distance between the symbols is maximized, hence the Symbol Error Ratio (SER) is minimized. Specifically, we conceive NCM methods for PSK, PAM and QAM based on modulo addition of the normalized phase or amplitude. Furthermore, we propose low complexity decoding algorithms based on the corresponding conditional minimum distance criteria. Our performance analysis and simulations demonstrate that NCM relying on PSK is capable of achieving a SER at both receivers of the NCM scheme as if the relay transmitted exclusively to a single receiver only. By contrast, when our NCM concept is combined with PAM/QAM, an SNR loss (<1.25dB) is imposed at one of the receivers, usually at the one having a lower data rate in a realistic different rate scenario. Finally, we will demonstrate that the proposed NCM is compatible with existing physical layer designs

Polar Coding Schemes for Cooperative Transmission Systems

: In this thesis, a serially-concatenated coding scheme with a polar code as the outer code and a low density generator matrix (LDGM) code as the inner code is firstly proposed. It is shown that that the proposed scheme provides a method to improve significantly the low convergence of polar codes and the high error floor of LDGM codes while keeping the advantages of both such as the low encoding and decoding complexity. The bit error rate results show that the proposed scheme by reasonable design have the potential to approach a performance close to the capacity limit and avoid error floor effectively. Secondly, a novel transmission protocol based on polar coding is proposed for the degraded half-duplex relay channel. In the proposed protocol, the relay only needs to forward a part of the decoded source message that the destination needs according to the exquisite nested structure of polar codes. It is proved that the scheme can achieve the capacity of the half-duplex relay channel while enjoying low encoding/decoding complexity. By modeling the practical system, we verify that the proposed scheme outperforms the conventional scheme designed by low-density parity-check codes by simulations. Finally, a generalized partial information relaying protocol is proposed for degraded multiple-relay networks with orthogonal receiver components (MRN-ORCs). In such a protocol, each relay node decodes the received source message with the help of partial information from previous nodes and re-encodes part of the decoded message for transmission to satisfy the decoding requirements for the following relay node or the destination node. For the design of polar codes, the nested structures are constructed based on this protocol and the information sets corresponding to the partial messages forwarded are also calculated. It is proved that the proposed scheme achieves the theoretical capacity of the degraded MRN-ORCs while still retains the low-complexity feature of polar codes