To Cooperate or Not to Cooperate?

That Is the
Question!

M. H. Ahmed and Salama Ikki

Memorial University
Newfoundland, Canada

Chapter 3

1
 Outline
Introduction

System Overview of Cooperative-Diversity Systems

Benefits of Cooperative-Diversity Systems
Major Challenges of Cooperative-Diversity Systems
Discussion and Conclusion

2
 Introduction
Relayed transmission is a promising technique for improving
the quality of wireless communications.

Its advantages relative to direct link communication include:

Ease of implementation and good scalability
Increased connectivity
Robustness to changing channel conditions, and
Reduced operating power levels

The relays are classified into:

Regenerative: fully decode the received signal
Non- regenerative: forward an amplified version of the
received signal

3
 Overview of Cooperative-Diversity Systems

Relaying Techniques

Amplify-and-Forward

I.Relays simply amplify the received signal (including

the desired signal and added noise as well.)

II.It is difficult to implement in TDMA systems because it

requires the storage of a large amount of analog data.

III.AF suffers from the noise amplification problem

which can degrade the signal quality, particularly at low
SNR
4
 Overview of Cooperative-Diversity Systems
Relaying Techniques

Decode-and-Forward

Fixed Decode-and-forward

I.Removes the noise by decoding the received signals and

then regenerating and re-encoding the signal to be
forwarded to the destination.

II.DF suffers from the error propagation problem which

may occur if the relay incorrectly detects/decodes a
message and forwards this incorrect information to the
destination.
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 Overview of Cooperative-Diversity Systems
Relaying Techniques

Decode-and-Forward

Adaptive Decode-and-forward

I.The relay forwards the signal to the destination only if it

is able to decode the signal correctly.

II.The correct decoding can be checked using some error

detection check or SNR threshold.

III.A special case is that when the relay detects the signal
but does not decode it. In this case the scheme is called
detect-and-forward 6
 Overview of Cooperative-Diversity Systems
Relaying Techniques
Other Relaying Techniques

I.Hybrid AF and DF: the relay switches between AF and DF

depending on the channel conditions

II.Demodulate-and-forward: the relay demodulates (without

detecting) the received signal and then forwards the signal to
the destination.

III.Incremental Relaying: limit the cooperation to necessary

conditions

IV.Best-Relay Selection: is used to improve the resource

utilization. In this case, the best relay only is selected to forward
the signal to the destination. 7
 Overview of Cooperative-Diversity Systems

Combining Techniques
Maximum Ratio Combining (MRC)

I.The received signals are weighted by the optimal weights

then, the weighted signals are added coherently.

II.The main drawback of the MRC technique is that it

requires full knowledge of the channel state information
(CSI).

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 Overview of Cooperative-Diversity Systems
Combining Techniques
Other Combining Techniques

I.Optimum Combining (OC) that maximizes SNR in

interference-limited networks.

II.Generalized Selection Combining (GSC), where N of M

relayed signals are selected based on some signal-quality
criterion.

III.Cooperative Space-Time Coding relays cooperate with the

source to form a space-time code (e.g., Alamouti
scheme).

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 Overview of Cooperative-Diversity Systems

Combining Techniques
Other Combining Techniques

I.Superposition Transmission: each node sends its own signal

to the BS. While each node sends its own signal, it listens to
the transmitted signal of its partner. Of course, this implies a
full duplex transmission, which is implemented using
orthogonal channels using CDMA codes.

II.Cooperative Beamforming, In this scheme each cooperating

node multiplies the signal (to be forwarded) by a specific
weight so that the cooperating nodes can form a beam
directed towards the destination.
10
 Benefits of Cooperative-Diversity Systems

Signal-Quality Improvement

1. Diversity Gain
2. Better Links
3. Virtual Array Gain

11
Benefits of Cooperative-Diversity Systems

12
 Benefits of Cooperative-Diversity Systems

Reduced Power : If we trade the signal-quality

improvement with the transmission power, the total
transmission power of cooperative diversity can be
reduced to be significantly less than the transmission
power of the traditional direct transmission for the
same end-to-end SNR or received power levels

13
 Benefits of Cooperative-Diversity Systems

Better Coverage: The extension the signal coverage

and communication range to remote users
experiencing large path-loss by utilizing the signal-
quality improvement (in terms of higher SNR and
received power). Also, if the relay locations are
carefully chosen, cooperative diversity can overcome
large shadowing that may exist in the direct link due to
blockage by large objects

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 Benefits of Cooperative-Diversity Systems

Capacity Gain:

15
Major Challenges of Cooperative-Diversity Systems

Resources Over-Utilization: cooperative-diversity

systems need M+1 channels to send one message
from the source to the destination using M relays
1. Best-Relay Selection
2. Incremental Relaying
3. Superposition modulation

Additional Delay : When cooperative-diversity

systems (with M relays) use TDMA as the access
scheme, M+1 time slots are needed to send the signal
from the source to the destination.

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Major Challenges of Cooperative-Diversity Systems

Complexity
Signal Combining and Detection
Channel Estimation
Relaying Protocols
Synchronization
Resource Management

Unavailability of Cooperating Nodes: there is no

guarantee that other nodes will be always available or
willing to cooperate

Security Threats: serious challenge in securing

users data simply because different users share their
data with each other
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 Discussion and Conclusion

It has been shown that cooperative diversity brings several

benefits including better signal quality, reduced transmission
power, better coverage and higher capacity.

Cooperative diversity has some drawbacks and challenges

including resource over-utilization, additional delay,
implementation complexity, unavailability of cooperating
nodes and security threats.

It should be emphasized that the implementation of

cooperative diversity is shown to be challenging due to the
various complexity issues

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 Discussion and Conclusion

Reduced-complexity algorithms and protocols are needed

to simplify the implementation of cooperative diversity in
order to be able to harvest the benefits of cooperative
diversity.

Effective measures and schemes are required to increase

users motivation for cooperation and to enhance information
security and service authenticity in cooperative diversity.

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Thanks

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