Cooperative Communications over Flat Fading Channels with Carrier Offsets: A Double-Differential Modulation Approach

We propose double-differential (DD) modulation for the amplify-and-forward protocol over Nakagami-m fading channels with carrier offsets. We propose an emulated maximum ratio combining (EMRC) decoder, which could be used by the doubledifferential receiver in the absence of exact channel knowledge. Approximate bit error rate (BER) analysis is performed for the proposed double-differential modulation-based cooperative communication system. The proposed double-differential system is immune to random carrier offsets, whereas the conventional single-differential modulation-based cooperative system breaks down. In addition, the proposed scheme is able to perform better than the same rate training-based cooperative system which utilizes training data for finding estimates of carrier offsets and channel gains.