Relay Terminals Research Articles

Hierarchical modulation-based cooperation utilizing relay-assistant full-duplex diversity

In this paper, we present a hierarchical modulation-based cooperation (HMC) scheme to overcome capacity degradation due to half-duplex transmissions in conventional cooperative relay systems. In the HMC scheme, two relay terminals are used for both transmit and receive operations, i.e., full-duplex transmission. This scheme reduces the required number of time slots for cooperation. Utilizing this cooperative mechanism, the HMC scheme achieves cooperative diversity at the destination node by combining the signals delivered from the source and relay nodes. In addition, we derive a closed form of the end-to-end bit error rate for the HMC scheme, which is utilized to determine an optimal power ratio for hierarchical signals at the source node. In concurrence with the HMC scheme, we develop the best relay selection scheme for a practical wireless communication networks.

Power Allocation Strategies for Distributed Space-Time Codes in Two-Way Relay Networks

We study a two-way relay network (TWRN), where distributed space-time codes are constructed across multiple relay terminals in an amplify-and-forward mode. Each relay transmits a scaled linear combination of its received symbols and their conjugates, with the scaling factor chosen based on automatic gain control. We consider equal power allocation (EPA) across the relays, as well as the optimal power allocation (OPA) strategy given access to instantaneous channel state information (CSI). For EPA, we derive an upper bound on the pairwise-error-probability (PEP), from which we prove that full diversity is achieved in TWRNs. This result is in contrast to one-way relay networks, in which case a maximum diversity order of only unity can be obtained. When instantaneous CSI is available at the relays, we show that the OPA which minimizes the conditional PEP of the worse link can be cast as a generalized linear fractional program, which can be solved efficiently using the Dinkelback-type procedure. We also prove that, if the sum-power of the relay terminals is constrained, then the OPA will activate at most two relays.

Efficient Relay Beamforming Design With SIC Detection for Dual-Hop MIMO Relay Networks

In this paper, we consider a dual-hop multiple-input-multiple-output (MIMO) relay wireless network, in which a source-destination pair, which are both equipped with multiple antennas, communicates through a large number of half-duplex amplify-and-forward (AF) relay terminals. Two novel linear beamforming schemes based on the matched filter and regularized zero-forcing precoding techniques are proposed for the MIMO relay system. We focus on the linear process at the relay nodes and design the new relay beamformers by utilizing the channel-state information (CSI) of both backward and forward channels. The proposed beamforming designs are based on the QR decomposition filter at the destination node, which performs successive interference cancellation to achieve the maximum spatial-multiplexing gain. Simulation results demonstrate that the proposed beamformers that fulfil both the intranode array gain and distributed array gain outperform other relaying schemes under different system parameters in terms of the ergodic capacity.

Transparent Amplify-and-Forward Relaying in MIMO Relay Channels

In this paper, we investigate the performance of a single-relay assisted cooperative link, where the source, relay, and destination terminals are equipped with multiple transmit and receive antennas. We focus on the so-called transparent amplify-and-forward (T-AaF) for MIMO relay channels, in which the relay requires neither channel state information (CSI) nor synchronization of symbols or carrier. Specifically, we propose and analyze new selection schemes, where the relay, based on the received signal energies, selects the "best" received signal on the S → R hop and forwards it to the destination terminal with either repetitive or selective transmission. Through the derivation of pairwise error probability (PEP) expressions and asymptotic order of diversity (AOD) analysis, we demonstrate that the proposed selection schemes preserve full diversity order, while maintaining low complexity implementation, which makes them attractive from a practical point of view. Furthermore, we show that adopting selective transmission on the R → D hop provides better performance, better throughput, and significantly better energy efficiency than repetitive transmission. A Monte Carlo simulation study is also presented to corroborate the analytical results and to provide detailed performance comparisons between the two schemes under consideration.

Cellular Systems with Non-Regenerative Relaying and Cooperative Base Stations

In this paper, the performance of cellular networks with joint multicell processing and dedicated relay terminals is investigated. It is assumed that each relay terminal is capable of full-duplex operation and receives the transmission of relay terminals in adjacent cells. Focusing on intra-cell time division multiple access and non-fading channels, a simplified relay-aided uplink cellular model is considered. Addressing the achievable per-cell sum-rate, two non-regenerative relaying schemes are considered. Interpreting the received signal at the base stations as the outcome of a two-dimensional linear time invariant system, the multicell processing rate of an amplify-and-forward scheme is derived and shown to decrease with the inter-relay interference level. A novel form of distributed compress-and-forward scheme with decoder side information is then proposed. The corresponding multicell processing rate, which is given as a solution of a simple fixed-point equation, reveals that the compress-and-forward scheme is able to completely eliminate the inter-relay interference, and it approaches a "cut-set-like" upper bound for strong relay terminal transmission power. The benefits of base-station cooperation via multicell processing over the conventional single site processing approach is also demonstrated for both protocols.

Near-Optimal Joint Antenna Selection for Amplify-and-Forward Relay Networks

This paper considers a joint antenna selection method in amplify-and-forward (AF) relay networks where the source, relay and destination terminals are all equipped with multiple antennas. The fact that the system's full diversity can be maintained by antenna selection at each terminal makes it a promising solution to reduce the hardware complexity of multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) terminals while realizing the diversity benefits of MIMO in relay networks. Since the exhaustive search for antenna subset selection is computationally prohibitive, we devise a low-complexity near-optimal joint antenna selection algorithm based on a constrained cross entropy optimization (CCEO) method to maximize the achievable rate and the convergence is guaranteed. Simulation results reveal both the effectiveness and the efficiency of the proposed algorithm and the significant performance improvement over other benchmark selection techniques. Finally, it is illustrated that the proposed CCEO algorithm can always achieve near-optimal results regardless of the number of selected antennas, outage probabilities and the signal-to-noise ratios (SNRs) at the terminals.

A Novel Quantize-and-Forward Cooperative System: Channel Estimation and M-PSK Detection Performance

A method to improve the reliability of data transmission between two terminals without using multiple antennas is cooperative communication, where spatial diversity is introduced by the presence of a relay terminal. The Quantize and Forward (QF) protocol is suitable to implement in resource constraint relays, because of its low complexity. In prior studies of the QF protocol, all channel parameters are assumed to be perfectly known at the destination, while in reality these need to be estimated. This paper proposes a novel quantization scheme, in which the relay compensates for the rotation caused by the source-relay channel, before quantizing the phase of the received M-PSK data symbols. In doing so, channel estimation at the destination is greatly simplified, without significantly increasing the complexity of the relay terminals. Further, the destination applies the expectation maximization (EM) algorithm to improve the estimates of the source-destination and relay-destination channels. The resulting performance is shown to be close to that of a system with known channel parameters.

Joint Power Allocation for Multicast Systems with Physical-Layer Network Coding

This paper addresses the joint power allocation issue in physical-layer network coding (PLNC) of multicast systems with two sources and two destinations communicating via a large number of distributed relays. By maximizing the achievable system rate, a constrained optimization problem is first formulated to jointly allocate powers for the source and relay terminals. Due to the nonconvex nature of the cost function, an iterative algorithm with guaranteed convergence is developed to solve the joint power allocation problem. As an alternative, an upper bound of the achievable rate is also derived to modify the original cost function in order to obtain a convex optimization solution. This approximation is shown to be asymptotically optimal in the sense of maximizing the achievable rate. It is confirmed throughMonte Carlo simulations that the proposed joint power allocation schemes are superior to the existing schemes in terms of achievable rate and cumulative distribution function (CDF).

Multi-hop MIMO relay networks: diversity-multiplexing trade-off analysis

A multi-hop relay network with multiple antenna terminals in a quasi-static slow fading environment is considered. The fundamental diversity-multiplexing gain tradeoff (DMT) is analyzed in the case of half-duplex relay terminals. While decode-and-forward (DF) relaying achieves the optimal DMT in the full-duplex relay scenario, it is shown that the dynamic decode-and-forward (DDF) protocol achieves the optimal DMT if the relay is constrained to half-duplex operation. For the latter case, static DF protocols are considered as well, and the corresponding DMT performance is shown to fall short of the optimal performance, which indicates that dynamic channel allocation is required for optimal DMT performance. The optimal DMT is expressed as the solution of a convex optimization problem and explicit DMT expressions are presented for some special cases. In the case of multiple relays, it is shown that the optimal diversity gain, which is achieved by exploiting the available "hop-diversity", is dominated by the neighboring two-hops with the minimum diversity gain.

Adaptive linearly constrained minimum variance beamforming for multiuser cooperative relaying using the kalman filter

In this paper, we consider a wireless communication scenario with multiple source-destination pairs communicating through several cooperative amplify-and-forward relay terminals. The relays are equipped with multiple antennas that receive the source signals and transmit them to the destination nodes. We develop two iterative relay beamforming algorithms that can be applied in real-time. In both algorithms, the relay beamforming matrices are jointly designed by minimizing the received power at all the destination nodes while preserving the desired signal at each destination. The first algorithm requires the existence of a local processing center that computes the beamforming coefficients of all the relays. In the second algorithm, each relay can compute its beamforming coefficients locally with the help of some common information that is broadcasted from the other relays. This is achieved at the expense of enforcing the desired signal preservation constraints non-cooperatively. We provide two extensions of the proposed algorithms that allow the relays to control their transmission power and to modify the quality of service provided to different sources. Simulation results are presented validating the ability of the proposed algorithms to perform their beamforming tasks efficiently and to track rapid changes in the operating environment.

Low-complexity distributed differential spacetime coding scheme for amplify-and-forward cooperative networks

By introducing a space-time coding scheme based on amicable orthogonality, we develop a distributed differential space-time coding scheme with the amplify-and-forward (AF) method for wireless cooperative networks. The scheme requires no knowledge of the channel state information at both transmitters and receivers, and effectively decreases the realization complexity due to no channel estimation. Moreover, it has lower decoding complexity and higher coding advantage than the existing scheme, thus avoiding the shortcoming of exponential decoding complexity of some existing schemes. According tothe pairwise error probability (PEP) analysis of the system, the power allocations of source and relay terminals are jointly optimized, and as a result, the PEP is minimized, which will provide a helpful guideline for system design. Numerical calculation and simulation results show that the developed scheme is superior to the existing scheme. Moreover, the scheme with optimal power allocation yields obvious performance improvement over that with equal power allocation.

Collaborative Uplink Transmit Beamforming With Robustness Against Channel Estimation Errors

We consider the uplink of collaborative wireless communication systems, where multiple relay terminals decode the signal of a nearby user and forward it to a distant single-antenna base station. We present a collaborative uplink transmit beamforming strategy that can be employed at the relay terminals to provide robustness against uncertainties in the channel state information. The proposed beamforming scheme is obtained using the available knowledge about the second-order statistics of the channel and the possibly erroneous channel state information. The beamforming weight vector is derived by minimizing the total transmitted power subject to a constraint that preserves the received signal at the base station for all the channel realizations within a prescribed uncertainty set. We present two beamforming algorithms based on different mathematical descriptions of the uncertainty set. Both algorithms can be applied to line-of-sight (LOS) propagation and flat-fading channels. In the first algorithm, the robust beamforming vector is computed at the base station using the uplink data and fed back to the cooperating relay terminals. This centralized processing scheme allows any additional convex constraint to be easily incorporated into the beamforming strategy. In the second algorithm, the beamforming vector of each terminal is locally computed using the available knowledge about the terminal's channel and a single parameter (Lagrange multiplier) that is broadcast from the base station to all the cooperating terminals. Simulation results are presented, showing the superior performance of our proposed algorithms compared with classical transmit beamforming techniques in both LOS propagation and flat-fading channels.

A Cross-Layer Design of User Cooperation for Rate Adaptive Wireless Local Area Networks

In this paper, we propose a cross-layer design of packet level cooperation for wireless LANs that support rate adaptation. While keeping compatibility with legacy wireless LANs, distributed control of multi-hop packet transmission is enabled without pre-negotiation of routing or pairing. These features are provided by prioritization scheme based on IEEE 802.11e EDCF in which we set the parameters according to the measured link condition at each terminal. Relaying packets with high transmission rate makes much efficient use of radio resource, and it leads not only to improve performance of the total system, but also to overcome the fairness issue known in rate adaptation, where the terminals with good link conditions cannot gain enough resource because of the time consumed by low data rate transmission. These advantages are confirmed through computer simulations considering packet error rate at each transmission which is assumed by receiving power calculated from the distance between source, relay, and destination terminals. Furthermore, we also discuss about the fairness between cooperation-enabled and legacy terminals when they coexist in the same system, in order to make gradual deployment feasible.

Cooperative Diversity with Multiple-Antenna Nodes in Fading Relay Channels

In this paper, we investigate the performance of a single-relay cooperative scenario where the source, relay and destination terminals are equipped with multiple transmit/receive antennas. We assume that conventional space-time block codes are employed in the underlying source-to-destination (SrarrD), source-to-relay (S rarr R) and relay-to-destination (R rarr D) links, and consider both decode-and-forward (DaF) and amplify - and-forward (AaF) relaying techniques. For the latter one, we consider two variants based on the availability of channel state information (CSI); namely, blind AaF and CSI-assisted AaF. Through the derivation of pairwise error probability, we quantify analytically the impact of multiple antenna deployment for each relaying technique under various scenarios which involve relay location and power control assumptions imposed on cooperating nodes. Our transmission model assumes that the source and destination terminals are equipped with MS transmit and N receive antennas, respectively, and the relay terminal is equipped with MR receive and MT transmit antennas. For a scenario where R rarr D and S rarr D links are balanced and S rarr R link experiences sufficiently large SNR, our performance analysis demonstrates that the maximum achievable diversity order is MT min(MS, N)+MSN for blind AaF scheme and N(MT+MS) for both CSI-assisted AaF and DaF schemes. For another scenario where R rarr D link has a sufficiently large SNR and S rarr R and S rarr D links are balanced, CSI-assisted AaF, blind AaF and DaF schemes achieve diversity orders of MS(N + MR), MS(N + MT), and MSN, respectively. Other scenarios involving the availability of non-fading R rarr D link and poor inter-user channel quality are further investigated. An extensive Monte Carlo simulation study is also presented to corroborate the analytical results and to provide detailed performance comparisons among the three relaying techniques under consideration.

A Low-Complexity LMMSE Channel Estimation Method for OFDM-Based Cooperative Diversity Systems with Multiple Amplify-and-Forward Relays

Orthogonal frequency division multiplexing- (OFDM-) based amplify-and-forward (AF) cooperative communication is an effective way for single-antenna systems to exploit the spatial diversity gains in frequency-selective fading channels, but the receiver usually requires the knowledge of the channel state information to recover the transmitted signals. In this paper, a training-sequences-aided linear minimum mean square error (LMMSE) channel estimation method is proposed for OFDM-based cooperative diversity systems with multiple AF relays over frequency-selective fading channels. The mean square error (MSE) bound on the proposed method is derived and the optimal training scheme with respect to this bound is also given. By exploiting the optimal training scheme, an optimal low-rank LMMSE channel estimator is introduced to reduce the computational complexity of the proposed method via singular value decomposition. Furthermore, the Chu sequence is employed as the training sequence to implement the optimal training scheme with easy realization at the source terminal and reduced computational complexity at the relay terminals. The performance of the proposed low-complexity channel estimation method and the superiority of the derived optimal training scheme are verified through simulation results.

BER-Optimized Power Allocation for Fading Relay Channels

Optimum power allocation is a key technique to realize the full potentials of relay-assisted transmission promised by the recent information-theoretic results. In this paper, we present a comprehensive framework for power allocation problem in a single-relay scenario taking into account the effect of relay location. In particular, we aim to answer the two fundamental questions: (Q1) How should the overall transmit power be shared between broadcasting and relaying phases?; (Q2) In the relaying phase, how much power should be allocated to relay-to- destination and source-to-destination links? The power allocation problem is formulated to minimize a union bound on the bit error rate (BER) performance assuming amplify-and-forward relaying. We consider both orthogonal and non-orthogonal cooperation protocols. Optimized protocols demonstrate significant performance gains over their original versions which assume equal sharing of overall transmit power between the source and relay terminals as well as between broadcasting and relaying phases. It is observed that optimized virtual (distributed) antenna configurations are able to demonstrate a BER performance as close as 0.4 dB within their counterpart co-located antenna configurations.

Amplify-and-forward cooperation under interference-limited spatial reuse of the relay slot

Cooperative transmission has emerged as an effective tool to deal with channel impairments. In this work we study the applicability of amplify-and-forward cooperative transmission in the downlink of a TDMA cellular system where idle terminals act as relays. The base station may have a multiple antenna configuration, whereas all terminals are equipped with a single antenna. Although cooperation can be viewed as a virtual MIMO system, it further allows dealing with shadowing and pathloss. In order to improve the spectral efficiency loss incurred by the half-duplex relays, in this work we consider the reuse of the relay time slot by simultaneous transmissions from the active relays in the cell. We are able to model the interfering power received by each destination in that slot. The only system parameters adjusted to control the interference are the number of interfering relay terminals and a cell-wide .target SNR in the relay-destination link. This way, it is shown that cooperative transmission is able to provide significant gains in terms of throughput over the direct transmission under round-robin packet scheduling and uniform distribution of terminals by controlling the rate of each transmission (rate control).

Nested cooperative encoding protocol for wireless networks with high energy efficiency

Recently, distributed space-time code designs with high cooperative diversity for wireless communication networks, such as ad hoc and sensor networks, have received much attention. Amplify forward and decoding forward are widely used protocols for the cooperative diversity in the wireless communication networks. In both protocols, the information received by relay terminals are forwarded to destination or next relay terminals. Since the signals transmitted by relay terminals and those transmitted from the source terminal are correlated, there is information redundancy. To improve the energy efficiency of cooperative networks, we propose an encoding protocol, which is referred to as a nested cooperative encoding protocol. In our proposed protocol, the received signal at each relay terminal is divided into several sub-signals with the nest lattice structure of source information. Each of the sub-signals contains only a partial information with a smaller size of constellation compared to the original information sent by the source terminal. Do a new encoding or modulation by using these sub-signals before transmitting at relay terminals. It is shown that the proposed new protocols can achieve both high cooperative diversity and high energy efficiency.

Asymptotic analysis of amplify-and-forward relaying in Nakagami-fading environments

Amplify-and-forward (AF) relaying strategies are studied for Nakagami-fading channels in an (N + 2)-terminal wireless cooperative system where a source terminal transmits information to a destination terminal with the assistance of N relay terminals. The asymptotic outage behavior is investigated in terms of coding and diversity gains for channel-state information (CSI)-assisted AF relaying and semi-blind AF relaying in various channel profiles. It is shown that semi-blind AF relaying system achieves strictly higher average SNRs. Further, when there exists fading severity difference between the source-to-relay and relay-to-destination links, both AF strategies achieve the same diversity gain whereas semi-blind AF achieves strictly lower coding.

Non-Coherent and Mismatched-Coherent Receivers for Distributed STBCs with Amplify-and-Forward Relaying

Cooperative diversity is a transmission technique where multiple nodes in a network cooperate to form a virtual antenna array realizing the benefits of spatial diversity in a distributed fashion. The coherent scenario considered in most existing work on cooperative diversity assumes the availability of perfect channel state information at the relay and destination terminals and is highly unrealistic in practical applications. In this paper, we investigate non-coherent and mismatched-coherent receivers for a cooperative diversity scheme assuming both quasi-static and time-varying fading channels for the underlying cooperative links. Specifically, we consider a distributed space- time block coded (STBC) system in a single-relay scenario operating in the amplify-and-forward relaying mode. Exploiting the orthogonal structure of distributed STBC, we first derive a non-coherent decoding rule which can be implemented in practice by a Viterbi-type algorithm. Although this decoding rule has been derived assuming quasi-static channels,- its inherent channel tracking capability allows its deployment over time- varying channels with a promising performance as a sub-optimal solution. As a possible alternative to non-coherent detection, we investigate the performance of mismatched-coherent receiver (i.e., coherent detection with imperfect channel estimation) within the considered relay-assisted transmission scenario. We further compare the performance of non-coherent and mismatched- coherent receivers to reveal their robustness under various mobility scenarios.