A diversity compression and combining technique based on channel shortening for cooperative networks

The cooperative relaying process with multiple relays needs proper coordination among the communicating and the relaying nodes. This coordination and the required capabilities may not be available in some wireless systems where the nodes are equipped with very basic communication hardware. We consider a scenario where the source node transmits its signal to the destination through multiple relays in an uncoordinated fashion. The destination captures the multiple copies of the transmitted signal through a Rake receiver. We analyze a situation where the number of Rake fingers N is less than that of the relaying nodes L. In this case, the receiver can combine N strongest signals out of L. The remaining signals will be lost and act as interference to the desired signal components. To tackle this problem, we develop a novel signal combining technique based on channel shortening principles. This technique proposes a processing block before the Rake reception which compresses the energy of L signal components over N branches while keeping the noise level at its minimum. The proposed scheme saves the system resources and makes the received signal compatible to the available hardware. Simulation results show that it outperforms the selection combining scheme. © 2012 IEEE.