Performance Analysis of Output Threshold-Based Incremental Multiple-Relay Combining Scheme with Adaptive Modulation for Cooperative Networks

In this paper, we propose an output threshold-based incremental multiple-relay combining scheme for cooperative amplify-and-forward relay networks with nonidentically distributed relay channels. Specifically, in order to achieve the required performance, we consider both conventional incremental relaying and multiple-relay selection where relays are adaptively selected based on a predetermined output threshold. Moreover, the adaptive modulation technique is adopted by our proposed scheme for satisfying both the spectral efficiency and the required error rate. For the proposed scheme, we first derive an upper bound of the output combined signal-to-noise ratio and then provide its statistics such as cumulative distribution function (CDF), probability density function (PDF), and moment generating function (MGF) over independent, nonidentically distributed Rayleigh fading channels. Additionally, we analyze the system performance in terms of average spectral efficiency, average bit error rate, outage probability, and system complexity. Finally, numerical examples show that our proposed scheme leads to a certain performance improvement in the cooperative networks

Low Complexity Adaptive Transmission Scheme for Cooperative Networks with Decode-and-Forward Relay

In this paper, we consider adaptive quadratic amplitude modulation (QAM) for a cooperative network consists of a source, one decode-and-forward (DF) relay and a destination which are single antenna systems. For increasing the spectral efficiency of the system, we use adaptive modulation method for data transmission. We propose a new adaptive modulation scheme which has less complexity than available schemes. Then, we analyze average spectral efficiency (ASE), average bit error performance (ABEP) and outage probability of the proposed scheme. Computer simulation results corroborate our theoretical relations; furthermore, it shows that our proposed scheme has the same performance as maximum spectral efficiency scheme (MSES) with much lower complexity and has better performance than some other schemes

Adaptive Relay-Selection In Decode-And-Forward Cooperative Systems

In the past few years adaptive decode-and-forward cooperative diversity systems have been studied intensively in literature. Many schemes and protocols have been proposed to enhance the performance of the cooperative systems while trying to alleviate its drawbacks. One of the recent schemes that had been shown to give high improvements in performance is the best-relay selection scheme. In the best-relay selection scheme only one relaying nodes among the relays available in the system is selected to forward the source\u27s message to the destination. The best relay is selected as the relay node that can achieve the highest end-to-end signal-to-noise ratio (snr) at the destination node. Performance improvements have been reported as compared to regular fixed decode-and-forward relaying in which all relays are required to forward the source\u27s message to the destination in terms of spectral efficiency and diversity order. In this thesis, we use simulations to show the improvement in the outage performance of the best-relay selection scheme

Collaborative HARQ Schemes for Cooperative Diversity Communications in Wireless Networks

Wireless technology is experiencing spectacular developments, due to the emergence of interactive and digital multimedia applications as well as rapid advances in the highly integrated systems. For the next-generation mobile communication systems, one can expect wireless connectivity between any devices at any time and anywhere with a range of multimedia contents. A key requirement in such systems is the availability of high-speed and robust communication links. Unfortunately, communications over wireless channels inherently suffer from a number of fundamental physical limitations, such as multipath fading, scarce radio spectrum, and limited battery power supply for mobile devices. Cooperative diversity (CD) technology is a promising solution for future wireless communication systems to achieve broader coverage and to mitigate wireless channels’ impairments without the need to use high power at the transmitter. In general, cooperative relaying systems have a source node multicasting a message to a number of cooperative relays, which in turn resend a processed version message to an intended destination node. The destination node combines the signal received from the relays, and takes into account the source’s original signal to decode the message. The CD communication systems exploit two fundamental features of the wireless medium: its broadcast nature and its ability to achieve diversity through independent channels. A variety of relaying protocols have been considered and utilized in cooperative wireless networks. Amplify and forward (AAF) and decode and forward (DAF) are two popular protocols, frequently used in the cooperative systems. In the AAF mode, the relay amplifies the received signal prior to retransmission. In the DAF mode, the relay fully decodes the received signal, re-encodes and forwards it to the destination. Due to the retransmission without decoding, AAF has the shortcoming that noise accumulated in the received signal is amplified at the transmission. DAF suffers from decoding errors that can lead to severe error propagation. To further enhance the quality of service (QoS) of CD communication systems, hybrid Automatic Repeat-reQuest (HARQ) protocols have been proposed. Thus, if the destination requires an ARQ retransmission, it could come from one of relays rather than the source node. This thesis proposes an improved HARQ scheme with an adaptive relaying protocol (ARP). Focusing on the HARQ as a central theme, we start by introducing the concept of ARP. Then we use it as the basis for designing three types of HARQ schemes, denoted by HARQ I-ARP, HARQ II-ARP and HARQ III-ARP. We describe the relaying protocols, (both AAF and DAF), and their operations, including channel access between the source and relay, the feedback scheme, and the combining methods at the receivers. To investigate the benefits of the proposed HARQ scheme, we analyze its frame error rate (FER) and throughput performance over a quasi-static fading channel. We can compare these with the reference methods, HARQ with AAF (HARQ-AAF) and HARQ with perfect distributed turbo codes (DTC), for which correct decoding is always assumed at the relay (HARQ-perfect DTC). It is shown that the proposed HARQ-ARP scheme can always performs better than the HARQ-AAF scheme. As the signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) of the channel between the source and relay increases, the performance of the proposed HARQ-ARP scheme approaches that of the HARQ-perfect DTC scheme

Performance Analysis of Adaptive Modulation for Distributed Switch-and-Stay Combining with Single Relay

In this paper we present our investigation of the performance of a distributed switch-and-stay scheme and a solution for low-complexity cooperative relaying under adaptive transmission. We are able to derive the closed-form expressions of the occurrence probability, the outage probability, the bit error probability, and the achievable spectral efficiency of the proposed scheme for Rayleigh fading channels. Simulations are performed to verify the analytic results. It is shown that, by applying adaptive modulation, the achievable spectral efficiency of the system is improved significantly, and the proposed scheme achieves the same spectral efficiency as compared to that of the incremental relaying but with a lower relay activation time

Design and Performance Analysis of Efficient Cooperative Wireless Communication Systems

Cooperative communication has recently become a key technology for modern wireless networks such as 3GPP long-term evolution and WiMAX, because in such networks the transmission rate, the communication reliability, and coverage problems could be improved in a cost-effective manner. This, however, faces many design challenges. First, cooperative transmission typically involves a relaying phase which requires extra resources. This may cause a reduction in the spectral efficiency. Second, extra control signaling increases the complexity of operation, which may limit practical implementation. In addition, a wireless channel is time-varying, mainly due to the multipath propagation. As a result, a careful design of efficient cooperative communication systems is required, not only to enhance the spectral efficiency and maintain the quality-of-service (QoS), but also to be practical. In this dissertation, we aim to address the challenges imposed by cooperative communication and wireless transmission, and design the efficient and distributed systems which can be practically implemented in existing wireless systems. The research work is divided into two main topics: 1) adaptive cooperative wireless systems with variable-rate transmission, and 2) cooperative wireless systems with a power consumption constraint. The first topic investigates how the spectral efficiency of cooperative wireless communication systems can be improved while maintaining the QoS in terms of bit error rate and outage probability. The spectral efficiency enhancement is achieved by using three techniques: adaptivity over the relay node (i.e., relay node is active or not), adaptivity over the modulation mode, and relay selection. Based on that, we propose several adaptive cooperative schemes for both the decode-and-forward (DF) and amplify-and-forward (AF) protocols. To evaluate these schemes, we provide performance analysis in terms of average spectral efficiency, average bit error rate (ABER), and outage probability over Rayleigh fading channels. We start with the single-relay cooperative system using DF protocol, in which two adaptive cooperative schemes with variable-rate transmission are proposed. The first scheme, called the minimum error rate scheme (MERS), aims to exploit the transmit diversity to improve the bit error rate. By trading the multiplexing gain against the diversity gain, we propose the second scheme, called the maximum spectral efficiency scheme (MSES), in which cooperative transmission is avoided whenever it is not beneficial. The MERS improves the ABER significantly and achieves equal or better average spectral efficiency compared to the fixed (i.e., non-adaptive) relaying scheme. In contrast, the MSES provides the best average spectral efficiency due to its ability to not only adapt to the channel variation but also to switch between cooperative and non-cooperative transmissions. To further increase the spectral efficiency, we then propose the third scheme, called variable-rate based relay selection (VRRS) scheme, in which a relay node is selected from among the available relay nodes, based on a predefined criterion. Furthermore, we propose two AF adaptive cooperative schemes, mainly to enhance the spectral efficiency. In the first scheme, we introduce a generalized switching policy (GSP) for a single-relay cooperative wireless system that exploits the variable-rate transmission and useful cooperative regions. The second scheme, called the AF efficient relay selection (AFERS) scheme, extends the GSP to also consider the relay selection technique. Analytical and simulation results verify that the AFERS scheme not only outperforms conventional direct transmission in terms of the average spectral efficiency, but also the AF fixed relaying and the outage-based AF adaptive cooperative scheme. The second topic investigates the fair power consumption of the relay nodes for AF cooperative wireless communication systems. The fairness is defined as to achieve equal power consumption over the relay nodes. We focus on how the relay selection process can be controlled in a distributed manner so that the power consumption of the relay nodes can be included in relay selection. We first introduce a simple closed-form expression for the weight coefficient used in order to achieve the considered fairness that depends only on the local average channel conditions of the relay path. We then derive closed-form expressions of the weighted outage probability and ABER and show that our proposed strategy not only has less complexity than the conventional centralized one but also provides better accuracy in distributing the total consumed power equally among the relay nodes without affecting the performance