A new block Markov coding strategy for pairwise and collective cooperation in the three user MAC

For a three user cooperative multiple access channel (MAC), we propose a new block Markov superposition encoding strategy, which enables all three users to cooperate collectively as well as in pairs. We obtain the resulting achievable rate expressions and compare them with existing two and three user cooperative strategies. We demonstrate that significant rate gains may be possible, without resorting to adaptive encoding/decoding techniques. We investigate the contributions from pairwise and collective cooperation signals while achieving tuples on the rate region boundary, and compare by simulations the sum rates achievable by two user versus three user grouping in cooperative MACs with fixed total resources.