Distributed space-time cooperative systems with regenerative relays

This paper addresses some of the opportunities and the challenges in the design of multi-hop systems that utilize cooperation with one or two intermediate regenerative relays to provide high-quality communication between a source and a destination. We discuss the limitations of using a distributed Alamouti scheme in the relay channel and the additional complexity required to overcome its loss of diversity. As an alternative to the distributed Alamouti scheme, we propose and analyze two Error Aware Distributed Space-Time (EADST) systems built around the Alamouti code. First, using a bit error rate based relay selection approach, we design an EADST system with one and two regenerative relays that rely on feedback from the destination and we show that the proposed system improves on the distributed Alamouti scheme. In addition, we prove that the proposed one relay EADST system collects the full diversity of the distributed MISO channel. Second, we introduce an EADST system without feedback in which the relaying energies depend on the error probabilities at the relays. Numerical results show that both EADST systems perform close to the error probability lower bound obtained by considering error-free reception at the relays.