Throughput performance of parallel and repetition coding in incremental decode-and-forward relaying

The throughput performance of cooperative repetition and parallel coding in incremental decode-andforward is investigated. Four transmission methods are considered: parallel coding with and without distributed space-time coding (PC-ST and PC, respectively); and repetition coding with and without Chase combining at the destination (RC and SC, respectively). The analysis is based on the mutual information seen at the receiver for each scheme. Exact expressions for the outage probability and throughput for all methods are derived. Both ad-hoc and infra-structured relaying scenarios are investigated. Results show that SC can perform very close to RC, PC and PC-ST in terms of throughput, specially in the case of infra-structured relaying or adequate power and rate allocation. The conclusion is that SC would be a better option in practice, since it requires a simpler receiver than PC-ST, PC, and RC.