2-time slot cooperative relay can be used to increase the cell-edge throughput. Adaptive data modulation further improves the throughput. In this paper, we introduce adaptive modulation to single-carrier (SC) cooperative decode-and-forward (DF) relay. The best modulation combination for mobile-terminal (MT)-relay station (RS) and RS-base station (BS) links is determined for the given local average signal-to-noise power ratios (SNRs) of MT-BS, MT-RS and RS-BS links. According to the modulation combination, the ratio of time slot length of the MT-RS link (first time slot) and the RS-BS link (second time slot) is changed. It is shown by computer simulation that the use of adaptive modulation can achieve higher throughput than fixed modulation and reduces by about 9dB the required normalized total transmit SNR for a 10%-outage throughput of 0.8 bps/Hz compared to direct transmission.

Cooperative wireless communication is a communication mechanism to attain diversity through virtual antenna array that is formed by sharing resources among different users. Different strategies of resource utilization such as amplify-and-forward (AF) and decode-and-forward (DF) already exist in cooperative networks. Although the implementation of these strategies is simple, their utilization of the channel state information (CSI) is generally poor. As a result, the outage and bit error rate (BER) performances need much more improvement in order to satisfy the upcoming high data rate demands. For that to happen the spectral efficiency supported by a wireless system at a very low outage probability should be increased. In this paper a new approach, based on the previously existing ones, called CSI directed estimate and forward (CDEF) with a reduced estimation domain is proposed. A closed form solution for the optimal signal estimation at the relay using minimum mean square error (MMSE) as well as a possible set reduction of the estimation domain is given. It will be shown that this new strategy attains better symbol error rate (SER) and outage performance than AF or DF when the source relay link is comparatively better than the relay destination link. Simulation results also show that it has got better spectral efficiency at low outage probability for a given signal to noise ratio (SNR) as well as for a fixed outage probability in any operating SNR range.

This paper considers the power allocation (PA) problem for three-node decode-and-forward (DF) relay communication systems, where the aggregate transmit power constraint is imposed on the source and the relay and the optimization target is to maximize the system's instantaneous information rate. Since the relay is equipped with multiple antennas, the receiver and transmitter beamforming strategies are generally adopted. In this paper, we start by proposing a closed-form solution for the frequency-flat (FF) fading environment, then give a bisection algorithm with low complexity to obtain an optimal solution for the frequency-selective (FS) fading scenario. Finally, simulations validate the proposed methods.

The probability of making mistakes on the decoded signals at the relay has been used for the maximum-likelihood (ML) decision at the receiver in the decode-and-forward (DF) relay network. It is well known that deriving the probability is relatively easy for the uncoded single-antenna transmission with M-pulse amplitude modulation (PAM). However, in the multiplexing multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) transmission, the multi-dimensional decision region is getting too complicated to derive the probability. In this paper, a high-performance near-ML decoder is devised by applying a well-known pairwise error probability (PEP) of two paired-signals at the relay in the MIMO DF relay network. It also proves that the near-ML decoder can achieve the maximum diversity of MSMD+MR min (MS,MD), where MS, MR, and MD are the number of antennas at the source, relay, and destination, respectively. The simulation results show that 1) the near-ML decoder achieves the diversity we derived and 2) the bit error probability of the near-ML decoder is almost the same as that of the ML decoder.

Switch and stay combining (SSC) is an attractive diversity technique due to its low complexity and compatibility to resource-constrained wireless networks. This letter proposes a distributed SSC for partial relay selection networks in order to achieve spatial diversity as well as to improve spectral efficiency. Simulation results show that the performance loss (in terms of bit error probability) of the proposed networks relative to partial relay selection networks with selection combining is not substantial.

Cooperative transmission is an efficient approach to improve the performance of wireless communications over fading channels without the need for physical co-located antenna arrays. In this paper, we propose a novel cooperative protocol with selective decode-and-forward relays and generalized selection combining (GSC) technique at destination. The advantage of this scheme is that it not only allows us to optimize the structure of destination but also to fully exploit the diversity offered by the channels with an appropriate number of chosen strongest paths. For an arbitrary number of relays, an exact and closed-form expression of the Symbol Error Rate (SER) is derived for M-ary PSK in independent but not identically distributed Rayleigh fading channels. Various simulations are performed and their results exactly match the results of analyses.