Relay Power Allocation in Distributed Space-Time Coded Networks with Channel Statistical Information

This letter considers two-relay networks with Rician fading channels. It is assumed that the receiver has full channel information while the relays know the channel means and covariances only. To optimize network performance, we combine distributed space-time coding (DSTC) with relay power allocation. For the high signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) regime, we analytically find the relay power allocation that minimizes an upper bound on the pairwise error probability (PEP). Simulation shows that the proposed scheme largely improves network reliability. In some cases, lack of power allocation causes diversity loss.