On Cooperative Lattice Coding and Decoding

We propose novel lattice coding/decoding schemes for half-duplex outage-limited cooperative channels. These schemes are inspired by the cooperation protocols of Azarian et al. and enjoy an excellent performance-complexity tradeoff. More specifically, for the relay channel, we devise a novel variant of the dynamic decode and forward protocol, along with a lattice-coded implementation, which enjoys a near-optimal diversity-multiplexing tradeoff with a low encoding/decoding complexity. On the other hand, for the cooperative multiple-access channel, we present a lattice-coded implementation of the optimal non- orthogonal amplify and forward protocol. Finally, we establish the performance gains of our proposed protocols via a comprehensive simulation study.