Blind cooperative diversity using distributed space-time coding in block fading channels

Mobile users with single antennas can still take advantage of spatial diversity through cooperative space-time encoded transmission. In this paper, we consider a scheme in which a relay chooses to cooperate only if its source-relay channel is of an acceptable quality and we evaluate the usefulness of relaying when the source acts blindly and ignores the decision of the relays whether they may cooperate or not. In our study, we consider the regenerative relays in which the decisions to cooperate are based on a signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) threshold and consider the impact of the possible erroneously detected and transmitted data at the relays. We derive the end-to-end bit-error rate (BER) expression and its approximation for binary phase-shift keying modulation and look at two power allocation strategies between the source and the relays in order to minimize the end-to-end BER at the destination for high SNR. Some selected performance results show that computer simulations based results coincide well with our analytical results. © 2010 IEEE.