Collaborative diversity enhancements using rate-compatible turbo codes

The use of the spatial diversity is known to greatly improve the performance over the quasi-static wireless channel. In this paper, we propose a new coded cooperation protocol based on rate-compatible turbo codes. We consider the communication scenario to take place between clusters of nearby nodes with single antenna and demonstrate by a simple example that the diversity gain may be realized by using our proposed approach similar to the conventional approach based on traditional space-time codes. Moreover, our proposed approach requires only a simple modification of the metric calculation to realize the collaborative diversity.