Distributed Space-Time Coding for Two-Way Relay Networks

In this paper, we study the design of Distributed Space-Time Coding (DSTC) for two-way relay networks, where two users have bidirectional communication in the presence of two relay nodes and a direct link. Two new DSTC methods based on Amplify-and-Forward (AF) and Decode-and-Forward (DF) relaying are proposed that provide full transmission rate in the network. We evaluate the performance of the proposed methods and compare them by computer simulations. Our simulations show that both schemes achieve the maximum diversity and in addition, the proposed DF-based method outperforms the AF-based one.