High-Rate, Distributed Training-Embedded Complex Orthogonal Designs for Relay Networks

Distributed Space-Time Block Codes (DSTBCs) from Complex Orthogonal Designs (CODs) (both square and non-square CODs other than the Alamouti design) are known to lose their single-symbol ML decodable (SSD) property when used in two-hop wireless relay networks using amplify and forward protocol. For such a network, in this paper, a new class of high rate, training-embedded (TE) SSD DSTBCs are constructed from TE-CODs. The proposed codes include the training symbols in the structure of the code which is shown to be the key point to obtain high rate as well as the SSD property. TE-CODs are shown to offer full-diversity for arbitrary complex constellations. Nonsquare TE-CODs are shown to provide higher rates (in symbols per channel use) compared to the known SSD DSTBCs for relay networks with number of relays less than 10.