Modulation and demodulation for cooperative diversity in wireless systems

This paper develops a general framework for maximum likelihood (ML) demodulation in cooperative wireless communication systems. Demodulators with piecewise-linear combining are proposed as an accurate approximation of the nonlinear ML detectors for coherent and noncoherent decode-and-forward (DF). The detectors with piecewise-linear combiner not only have certain implementation advantages over the nonlinear ML detectors, but also can lead to tight closed-form approximations for their error probabilities. High SNR approximations are derived based on the closed-form BER expressions. For noncoherent DF, the approximation suggests a different optimal location for the relay in DF than for the relay in amplify-and-forward (AF). A set of tight bounds of diversity order for coherent and noncoherent DF with multiple relays is also provided, and comparison between DF and AF suggests that DF with more than one relay loses about half of the diversity order of AF