Distributed Space-Time Codes Using Constellation Rotation

Rate and diversity impose a fundamental tradeoff in wireless communication. We propose a novel distributed space-time coding (DSTC) scheme based on constellation rotation (DSTC-CR) for Amplify-and-Forward relay networks. The proposed code can achieve full-diversity or full-rate, and also offers a flexibility for a desired rate-diversity tradeoff. This code can work well with arbitrary signal constellation and any number of relays and achieve minimal-delay. Through analysis of pairwise error probability, coding design criteria, Chernoff bound, decoding strategies and optimal power allocation are provided. Simulation results show that DSTC-CR scheme outperforms diagonal DSTC (DDSTC) and distributed linear dispersion (DLD) code at high power. From the comparison with DDSTC, the DSTC-CR scheme can achieve the same information rate using a lower modulation order.