Cooperative Communications Using Scalable, Medium Block-length LDPC Codes

Cooperative communications has received increasing attention in recent years because of the ubiquity of wireless devices. Each year more mobile computing devices enter the market, most of which have limitations in terms of size, number of antennas and battery power. Cooperation enables these devices to form a virtual multiple antenna system and benefit from diversity. Most of the literature on cooperation is information theoretic with often unrealistic assumptions. In this paper we examine decode and forward scheme from a practical point of view and utilize scalable, architecture-aware low density parity check (LDPC) codes. We present simulation results for two variations of decode and forward strategy and show that even with realistic assumptions about the system, relaying outperforms direct link communications with over 2.5 dB.