A Study on Cooperative Communication using Space-Time Codes

In cooperative communication systems, the source terminal transmits signal to the destination terminal with the aid of partner terminals. Therefore, the source terminal obtains extra spatial diversity gain. As a result, its performance is enhanced in term of higher achievable transmission rate, the larger coverage range, and the lower bit-error-rate (BER). Space-time codes (STCs) have been applied to cooperative communication systems in distributed fashion, in which the signal is spatially time exploited to obtain gains analogous to those provided by STCs. In this work, we consider the application of orthogonal Space-time Block Codes (OSTBCs) to the cooperative communication systems to further achieve higher diversity gain. The advances of the proposed approach are verified via computer simulations.