An adaptive transmission protocol for exploiting diversity and multiplexing gains in wireless relaying networks

Wireless relaying networks with distributed space-time block codes have been shown to provide high link reliability. This is because of the space diversity gain from multiple transmitting relays, which improves by adding more relays. The drawback of this approach is the overall reduction in throughput of the network. In this paper, we propose a method to construct a distributed space-time block code that is combined with spatial modulation to find a flexible trade-off between reliability and throughput. This proposed method is not restricted to a specific number of relays and can be constructed as necessary. The constructed code also uses a novel adaptive transmission protocol to achieve higher space diversity, even with relays equipped with a single antenna. This protocol assumes use of coherent detection, meaning that a perfect channel estimation is available at the destination. Lastly, a new decoder is proposed that offers significant reduction in complexity to maintain high data throughput. All claims in this work are supported with theoretical analysis and backed up with empirical results.