Interference Cancellation at the Relay for Multi-User Wireless Cooperative Networks

We study multi-user transmission and detection schemes for a multi-access relay network (MARN) with linear constraints at all nodes. In a $(J, J_a, R_a, M)$ MARN, $J$ sources, each equipped with $J_a$ antennas, communicate to one $M$-antenna destination through one $R_a$-antenna relay. A new protocol called IC-Relay-TDMA is proposed which takes two phases. During the first phase, symbols of different sources are transmitted concurrently to the relay. At the relay, interference cancellation (IC) techniques, previously proposed for systems with direct transmission, are applied to decouple the information of different sources without decoding. During the second phase, symbols of different sources are forwarded to the destination in a time division multi-access (TDMA) fashion. At the destination, the maximum-likelihood (ML) decoding is performed source-by-source. The protocol of IC-Relay-TDMA requires the number of relay antennas no less than the number of sources, i.e., $R_a\ge J$. Through outage analysis, the achievable diversity gain of the proposed scheme is shown to be $\min\{J_a(R_a-J+1),R_aM\}$. When {\small$M\le J_a\left(1-\frac{J-1}{R_a}\right)$}, the proposed scheme achieves the maximum interference-free (int-free) diversity gain $R_aM$. Since concurrent transmission is allowed during the first phase, compared to full TDMA transmission, the proposed scheme achieves the same diversity, but with a higher symbol rate.Comment: submitted to IEEE Transaction on Wireless Communicatio

Code diversity in multiple antenna wireless communication

The standard approach to the design of individual space-time codes is based on optimizing diversity and coding gains. This geometric approach leads to remarkable examples, such as perfect space-time block codes, for which the complexity of Maximum Likelihood (ML) decoding is considerable. Code diversity is an alternative and complementary approach where a small number of feedback bits are used to select from a family of space-time codes. Different codes lead to different induced channels at the receiver, where Channel State Information (CSI) is used to instruct the transmitter how to choose the code. This method of feedback provides gains associated with beamforming while minimizing the number of feedback bits. It complements the standard approach to code design by taking advantage of different (possibly equivalent) realizations of a particular code design. Feedback can be combined with sub-optimal low complexity decoding of the component codes to match ML decoding performance of any individual code in the family. It can also be combined with ML decoding of the component codes to improve performance beyond ML decoding performance of any individual code. One method of implementing code diversity is the use of feedback to adapt the phase of a transmitted signal as shown for 4 by 4 Quasi-Orthogonal Space-Time Block Code (QOSTBC) and multi-user detection using the Alamouti code. Code diversity implemented by selecting from equivalent variants is used to improve ML decoding performance of the Golden code. This paper introduces a family of full rate circulant codes which can be linearly decoded by fourier decomposition of circulant matrices within the code diversity framework. A 3 by 3 circulant code is shown to outperform the Alamouti code at the same transmission rate.Comment: 9 page

Maximum Rate of Unitary-Weight, Single-Symbol Decodable STBCs

It is well known that the Space-time Block Codes (STBCs) from Complex orthogonal designs (CODs) are single-symbol decodable/symbol-by-symbol decodable (SSD). The weight matrices of the square CODs are all unitary and obtainable from the unitary matrix representations of Clifford Algebras when the number of transmit antennas $n$ is a power of 2. The rate of the square CODs for $n = 2^a$ has been shown to be $\frac{a+1}{2^a}$ complex symbols per channel use. However, SSD codes having unitary-weight matrices need not be CODs, an example being the Minimum-Decoding-Complexity STBCs from Quasi-Orthogonal Designs. In this paper, an achievable upper bound on the rate of any unitary-weight SSD code is derived to be $\frac{a}{2^{a-1}}$ complex symbols per channel use for $2^a$ antennas, and this upper bound is larger than that of the CODs. By way of code construction, the interrelationship between the weight matrices of unitary-weight SSD codes is studied. Also, the coding gain of all unitary-weight SSD codes is proved to be the same for QAM constellations and conditions that are necessary for unitary-weight SSD codes to achieve full transmit diversity and optimum coding gain are presented.Comment: accepted for publication in the IEEE Transactions on Information Theory, 9 pages, 1 figure, 1 Tabl

Application of Space-Time Diversity/Coding For Power Line Channels

The purpose of the present work is to evaluate the application of space-time block codes to the transmission of digital data over the power-line communication channel (PLC). Data transmitted over the power-line channel is usually corrupted by impulsive noise. In this work we analyse the performance of space-time block codes in this type of environment and show that a significant performance gain can be achieved at almost no processing expense