Cooperative diversity versus antenna diversity in wireless communication systems

Cooperative communication, a new way of communication has found its applications in almost every wireless network, from cellular to adhoc and sensor networks. The basic idea of cooperative communication is to emulate virtual antenna array to mimic a multi antenna system and hence get improved performance. In this paper, we provide performance analysis of cooperative communication using two basic cooperative protocols (Amplify & Forward and Decode & Forward). We discuss error rate performance comparison of cooperative system with non-cooperative single-input-single-output (SISO) and multi-input-single-output (MISO) systems under the same power constraints.