Turbo-coded decode-and-forward strategy resilient to relay errors

Cooperation in wireless systems can achieve spatial diversity gains as well as coverage enhancement. In the usual decode-and-forward (DF) strategy, a relay cooperates only when it can decode successfully the signal received from the source. This paper presents instead a DF strategy in which the receiver manages to take advantage of forwarded signals containing errors too. This increases the level of cooperation and is shown to offer significant gains in bit error rate.