Proposal of space-time block coded cooperative wireless transmission in Rayleigh fading channels

Space-time block codes (STBC) are well-known for use in the colocated multi-antenna systems to combat the adverse effects of fading channel. However, their application is limited in some scenarios where users can not support multiple transmit antennas. Therefore, we propose a solution of space-time block coded cooperative transmission among single-antenna users in the multiple access wireless environments to obtain the powerful benefits of multiantenna system without the demand for physical arrays. The closed-form BER expression was also derived and compared to the simulation results to verify the validity of the suggested method. A variety of numerical results demonstrated the superiority of cooperative transmission over direct transmission under flat Rayleigh fading channel plus AWGN (Additive White Gaussian Noise).