Distributed Space-Time Block Code over Mixed Rayleigh and Rician Frequency-Selective Fading Channels

This paper proposes a new distributed space-time block code (DSTBC) over frequency-selective fading channels for two-hop amplify and forward relay networks, consisting of a source node (S), two relay nodes (R1 and R2), and a destination node (D). The proposed DSTBC is designed to achieve maximal spatial diversity gain and decoupling detection of data blocks with a lowcomplexity receiver. To achieve these two goals, S uses zero-sequence padding, and relay nodes precode the received signals with a proper precoding matrix. The pairwise error probability (PEP) analysis is provided to investigate the achievable diversity gain of the proposed DSTBC for a general channel model in which one hop is modeled by Rayleigh fading and the other by Rician fading. This mixed Rayleigh-Rician channel model allows us to analyze two typical scenarios where {Ri} are in the neighborhood of either S or D .