Performance analysis of reliability filling on quasi-static fading channels

Cooperative communication techniques are network-based approaches to achieve spatial diversity in systems in which each node only has a single antenna. Many such techniques are based on relaying, which is effective in terms of error performance but requires a large information exchange among the cooperating nodes. Cooperative reception techniques that offer near-optimal performance with a smaller information exchange are an area of ongoing research. One promising approach is to investigate combining techniques that can be used as a model for designing efficient cooperative reception schemes. In this paper, we consider one such technique, called reliability filling, that combines only as much information as needed to meet some reliability threshold. We analyze the performance of this technique for several scenarios of interest. Analytical estimates of the overhead involved in reliability filling are also given. Analysis and simulation results show that reliability filling can offer performance close to maximal-ratio combining while combining fewer symbols.