Distributed Cooperative Relaying Based on Space-Time Block Code: System Description and Measurement Campaign

In cooperative relaying, intermediate stations are required to enhance the end-to-end transmission performance. The performance of the cooperative relaying scheme has been investigated theoretically and via computer simulations. However, cooperative relaying using transmit diversity techniques in actual environments has not been investigated thus far. This paper presents an experimental system for distributed cooperative relaying using space-time block code and evaluations of its transmission performances in real propagation channels. To this end, four wireless stations-specifically, one source, two relays, and one destination-were developed using analog transceivers and field-programmable gate arrays for real-time digital signal processing. Sample timing and frequency synchronizations among the four wireless stations were established by using the received signals as a reference. The end-to-end error performance of distributed cooperative relaying was compared to those of noncooperative relaying schemes, and the performances of three relaying schemes were evaluated quasisimultaneously in terms of their cumulative distribution functions of the bit-error ratios (BERs). The experimental results indicated that the BER performance of the two-hop distributed cooperative relaying scheme was substantially superior to those of noncooperative two-hop relaying schemes, including a route diversity scheme.