Iterative network-channel decoding with cooperative space-time transmission

One of the most efficient methods of exploiting space diversity for portable wireless devices is cooperative communication utilizing space-time block codes. In cooperative communication, users besides communicating their own information, also relay the information of other users. In this paper we investigate a scheme where cooperation is achieved using two methods, namely, distributed space-time coding and network coding. Two cooperating users utilize Alamouti space time code for inter-user cooperation and in addition utilize a third relay which performs network coding. The third relay does not have any of its information to be sent. In this paper we propose a scheme utilizing convolutional code based network coding, instead of conventional XOR based network code and utilize iterative joint networkchannel decoder for efficient decoding. Extrinsic information transfer (EXIT) chart analysis is performed to investigate the convergence property of the proposed decoder.