Performance Analysis of Two-User Cooperative Multiple Access Systems With DF Relaying and Superposition Modulation

In this paper, a two-user cooperative multiple access (CMA) system is considered. Using the superposition modulation scheme, we propose a low-complexity suboptimal detector at the destination to achieve the performance close to that of the optimal maximum-likelihood sequence detector (MLSD). For independent and non-identically distributed (i.n.d.) Rayleigh-faded channels, we derive error decision regions and present the exact bit-error rate (BER) expression in an integral form, which is validated by simulation results. We also approximate the decision regions and obtain the BER bound in closed form. Another efficient transmission scheme, i.e., the time-division broadcast (TDBC) protocol operating in three time slots, is also considered and analyzed. BER results show that the superposition modulation outperforms the others and can achieve both full diversity order and high coding gain.