Distributed turbo-BLAST for cooperative wireless networks

The turbo-BLAST scheme is considered as a spectrum-effective structure to construct multiple-input-rnultiple-output (MIMO) systems. In this paper, we extend the turbo-MIMO structure to cooperative networks, and a novel distributed turbo-BLAST scheme is proposed. Unlike most cooperative MIMO network methods that focus on achieving cooperative diversity gain, the proposed method achieves reliable high-rate data communication with reduced rate in the relay nodes through cooperative spatial multiplexing (C-SM). In the relay nodes, the amplify-and-forward algorithm is adopted which allows simplified implementations and requires no knowledge of the channel state information (CSI) at the transmitter and the relay nodes. The use of multi-hop turbo-MIMO structure further improves the energy efficiency and overall performance.