Diversity Analysis for Relay-Assisted Distributed BICM-OSTBC- OFDM System

Maximum spatial-frequency diversity can be achieve by combining bit-interleaved coded modulation (BICM), orthogonal space-time block coding (OSTBC) and orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) in frequency selective multi-path fading channels, provided that perfect channel state information (CSI) is available to the receiver. In view of the fact that perfect CSI can be obtained only if a sufficient amount of resource is allocated for training or pilot data, this paper investigates DF relay based technique for the distributed BICM-OSTBC-OFDM system. Our focus is mainly on noncoherent diversity analysis. We study a class of carefully designed transmission schemes, called perfect channel identifiability (PCI) achieving schemes, and show that they can exhibit good diversity performance. Specifically, we present a worst-case diversity analysis framework to show that PCI-achieving schemes can achieve the maximum noncoherent spatial-frequency diversity of distributed BICM-OSTBC-OFDM. Simulation results are presented to confirm our theoretical claims and show that the proposed noncoherent schemes can exhibit near-coherent performance. IndexTerms: Bit-interleaved coded modulation (BICM), orthogonal space-time block coding (OSTBC), orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM), noncoherent decoding, diversity.