Distributed Coding and Modulation for 2-hop Communication via Relays

Abstract

The past few decades have seen tremendous growth in the field of wireless communication systems. At this juncture, just before the advent of the 4th Generation of mobile standards, the question asked is how to improve the system in terms of coverage, capacity and reliability for the cell-edge users in a cellular network. Providing answers to this question could result in a significant improvement in the average throughput of the cell. The main purpose of the thesis work is therefore to implement Cooperative Communication via Distributed System of Relays. This concept is derived from the combination of relaying technology and multiple antenna techniques used in MIMO systems. During this thesis work, two transmit diversity schemes: the Delay Diversity Scheme and the Distributed Alamouti Scheme are developed on a 3GPP LTE compliant platform described as the OpenAir Interface. The ultimate objective is basically to improve the system performance by exploiting macro-diversity gains obtained as a result of these schemes. In the process of this development, numerous challenging tasks are provided with efficient solutions and have been implemented. Moreover, the last but the most crucial task of the thesis is to develop an entirely new HARQ protocol for a distributed system of relays. The work has been carried out at Eurecom, France as an initial step to implement the aforementioned schemes on a real-time network