A shared-relay cooperative diversity scheme based on joint channel and network coding in the multiple access channel

In this paper we propose a cooperative diversity scheme for the scenario of two sources sharing a single relay. The scheme uses algebraic code superposition relaying in the multiple access fading channel to create spatial diversity under the constraint of limited communications resources. We also describe in detail a novel computationally efficient message passing algorithm at the destinationpsilas decoder which extracts the substantial spatial diversity contained in the code superposition and signal superposition. The decoder is based on a sliding window structure where certain a posteriori LLRs are retained as a priori LLRs for the next decoding. We show that despite the simplicity of the proposed scheme, diversity gains are efficiently leveraged by the simple combination of channel coding at the sources and network coding at the relay.