Low-complexity distributed differential spacetime coding scheme for amplify-and-forward cooperative networks

By introducing a space-time coding scheme based on amicable orthogonality, we develop a distributed differential space-time coding scheme with the amplify-and-forward (AF) method for wireless cooperative networks. The scheme requires no knowledge of the channel state information at both transmitters and receivers, and effectively decreases the realization complexity due to no channel estimation. Moreover, it has lower decoding complexity and higher coding advantage than the existing scheme, thus avoiding the shortcoming of exponential decoding complexity of some existing schemes. According tothe pairwise error probability (PEP) analysis of the system, the power allocations of source and relay terminals are jointly optimized, and as a result, the PEP is minimized, which will provide a helpful guideline for system design. Numerical calculation and simulation results show that the developed scheme is superior to the existing scheme. Moreover, the scheme with optimal power allocation yields obvious performance improvement over that with equal power allocation.