Performance analysis of a selective decode-and-forward cooperative system with SFBC and BICM-OFDM

In this paper, we analyze the bit error rate (BER) performance of selective decode-and-forward (DF) cooperative communications incorporating space-frequency block coding (SF-BC), bit-interleaved coded modulation (BICM) and orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM). For the classical 3-node cooperation model, a tight upper bound of BER for the coded system under Rayleigh fading channels is derived. By uniting the analysis for multi-antenna cooperative schemes and the analysis for BICM under a common framework, the upper bound is proved valid for moderate SNR regime. With reasonable simplifications in the analysis, an asymptotic PEP expression that takes into account the effect of space-frequency coding, channel coding and the channel parameters is also derived, and gives insights on the diversity gain of the system. The results are validated by simulations under various settings.