Space-Time Cooperation Diversity Using High-Rate Codes

In a multi-user communication system, cooperative diversity allows single-antenna mobile sets to achieve transmit diversity. Cooperative diversity improves the communication capacity and enhances the robustness of a wireless link when a single channel alone is not reliable. In this paper, a novel cooperative diversity scheme is introduced that enables simultaneous transmission of non-redundant data from all cooperative terminals. By taking advantages of both high-rate full-diversity space-time codes and the cooperative diversity, the proposed method provides high diversity gain beyond the number of physical transmit antennas without compromising the data rates. In essence, the proposed system aims at higher data rates over the non-cooperative counterpart, while maintaining the full diversity gain.