Cooperative transmission to increase gain by employing a precoding scheme

Abstract

Multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) systems are composed of source and destination nodes with multiple antennas. But when nodes cannot support multiple antennas due to size or other constraints, especially for mobiles, the MIMO cannot be used to provide diversity. Cooperative communication enables single antenna to realize virtual multiple antenna by sharing their antennas. Therefore, it offers transmit diversity. To achieve high performance by using Space-time block codes (STBC), we apply a precoding scheme to the transmit symbols. Even though precoding scheme has several shortcomings, it is possible to employ STBC with one transmit antenna, thereby achieving high gain without loss of transmission rate. Simulation results reveal that it is possible to obtain better error performance at the low signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) by using proposed scheme. © Springer 2008.