End-to-End Joint Antenna Selection Strategy and Distributed Compress and Forward Strategy for Relay Channels

Multi-hop relay channels use multiple relay stages, each with multiple relay nodes, to facilitate communication between a source and destination. Previously, distributed space-time codes were proposed to maximize the achievable diversity-multiplexing tradeoff, however, they fail to achieve all the points of the optimal diversity-multiplexing tradeoff. In the presence of a low-rate feedback link from the destination to each relay stage and the source, this paper proposes an end-to-end antenna selection (EEAS) strategy as an alternative to distributed space-time codes. The EEAS strategy uses a subset of antennas of each relay stage for transmission of the source signal to the destination with amplify and forwarding at each relay stage. The subsets are chosen such that they maximize the end-to-end mutual information at the destination. The EEAS strategy achieves the corner points of the optimal diversity-multiplexing tradeoff (corresponding to maximum diversity gain and maximum multiplexing gain) and achieves better diversity gain at intermediate values of multiplexing gain, versus the best known distributed space-time coding strategies. A distributed compress and forward (CF) strategy is also proposed to achieve all points of the optimal diversity-multiplexing tradeoff for a two-hop relay channel with multiple relay nodes.Comment: Accepted for publication in the special issue on cooperative communication in the Eurasip Journal on Wireless Communication and Networkin

Data-precoded algorithm for multiple-relay-assisted systems

A data-precoded relay-assisted (RA) scheme is proposed for a system cooperating with multiple relay nodes (RNs), each equipped with either a single-antenna or a two-antenna array. The classical RA systems using distributed space-time/frequency coding algorithms, because of the half-duplex constraint at the relays, require the use of a higher order constellation than in the case of a continuous link transmission from the base station to the user terminal. This implies a penalty in the power efficiency. The proposed precoding algorithm exploits the relation between QPSK and 4 L -QAM, by alternately transmitting through L relays, achieving full diversity, while significantly reducing power penalty. This algorithm explores the situations where a direct path (DP) is not available or has poor quality, and it is a promising solution to extend coverage or increase system capacity. We present the analytical derivation of the gain obtained with the data-precoded algorithm in comparison with distributed space-frequency block code (SFBC) ones. Furthermore, analysis of the pairwise error probability of the proposed algorithm is derived and confirmed with numerical results. We evaluate the performance of the proposed scheme and compare it relatively to the equivalent distributed SFBC scheme employing 16-QAM and non-cooperative schemes, for several link quality scenarios and scheme configurations, highlighting the advantages of the proposed scheme

User pairing in cooperative wireless network coding with network performance optimization

In this paper, we consider a network-coded cooperative wireless network, where users mutually pair among themselves to realize network coding. We assume a multi-user environment, where users transmit to a common destination in the absence of dedicated relaying nodes. We address the important problem of the mutual pairing of users, which directly governs the overall network performance. An optimal user pairing algorithm is proposed and tailored to maximize the network capacity. Next, we develop heuristic user pairing schemes, which demonstrate near-optimal performance at significantly reduced computational complexity. In particular, we propose max-max pairing to maximize the network capacity and max-min pairing to minimize the outage probability. We then consider power minimization for energy-constrained networks. A joint optimization problem is formulated and solved to find the pairing which maximizes the network capacity and minimizes the transmission power, while meeting certain network performance constraint, such as in terms of the minimum average capacity per user or maximum average outage probability per user

Resource Allocation for the Multiband Relay Channel: A Building Block for Hybrid Wireless Networks

We investigate optimal resource allocation for the multiband relay channel. We find the optimal power and bandwidth allocation strategies that maximize the bounds on the capacity, by solving the corresponding max-min optimization problem. We provide sufficient conditions under which the associated max-min problem is equivalent to a supporting plane problem, which renders the solution for an arbitrary number of bands tractable. In addition, the sufficient conditions derived are general enough so that a class of utility functions can be accommodated with this formulation. As an example, we concentrate on the case where the source has two bands and the relay has a single band available and find the optimal resource allocation. We observe that joint power and bandwidth optimization always yields higher achievable rates than power optimization alone, establishing the merit of bandwidth sharing. Motivated by our analytical results, we examine a simple scenario where new channels become available for a transmitter to communicate; that is, new source to relay bands are added to a frequency division relay network. Given the channel conditions of the network, we establish the guidelines on how to allocate resources in order to achieve higher rates, depending on the relative quality of the available links