A novel lattice coding framework is proposed for outage-limited cooperative
channels. This framework provides practical implementations for the optimal
cooperation protocols proposed by Azarian et al. In particular, for the relay
channel we implement a variant of the dynamic decode and forward protocol,
which uses orthogonal constellations to reduce the channel seen by the
destination to a single-input single-output time-selective one, while
inheriting the same diversity-multiplexing tradeoff. This simplification allows
for building the receiver using traditional belief propagation or tree search
architectures. Our framework also generalizes the coding scheme of Yang and
Belfiore in the context of amplify and forward cooperation. For the cooperative
multiple access channel, a tree coding approach, matched to the optimal linear
cooperation protocol of Azarain et al, is developed. For this scenario, the
MMSE-DFE Fano decoder is shown to enjoy an excellent tradeoff between
performance and complexity. Finally, the utility of the proposed schemes is
established via a comprehensive simulation study.Comment: 25 pages, 8 figure
