Power-efficient relay selection in cooperative networks using decentralized distributed space-time block coding

Distributed space-time block coding (Dis-STBC) achieves diversity through cooperative transmission among geographically dispersed nodes. In this paper, we present a power-efficient relay-selection strategy for decentralized Dis-STBC in a selective decode-and-forward cooperative network. In particular, for a two-stage network, each decoded node broadcasts a small amount of information with limited power. This node then utilizes its own and its neighbors' information to decide whether or not to act as a relay for the source information. In this way, only part of the decoded set will act as relays. Further, by applying the idea of this relay-selection strategy to each relaying hop in a multihop network, a power-efficient hop-by-hop routing strategy is formulated. The outage analyses and simulations are presented to illustrate the advantage of these strategies. Copyright (c) 2008 L. Zhang and L. J. Cimini Jr.. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.