Analysis and construction of full-diversity joint network-LDPC codes for cooperative communications

Abstract

Cooperative communication is a well known technique to yield transmit diversity and network coding can increase the spectral efficiency. These two techniques can be combined to achieve a double diversity order for a maximum coding rate Rc = 2/3 on the Multiple Access Relay Channel (MARC); Transmit diversity is necessary in harsh environments to reduce the required transmit power for achieving a given error performance at a certain transmission rate. In networks; where two sources share a common relay in their transmission to the destination. However; codes have to be carefully designed to obtain the intrinsic diversity offered by the MARC. This paper presents the principles to design a family of full-diversity LDPC codes with maximum rate. Simulation of the word error rate performance of the new proposed family of LDPC codes for the MARC confirms the full-diversity