Energy-efficient relay aided ad hoc networks using iteratively detected irregular convolutional coded, unity-rate coded and Space-Time Trellis Coded transceivers

The nodes of ad hoc networks are typically battery-powered, hence requiring the employment of energy-efficient schemes. Near-capacity coding schemes allow a single link to communicate using the lowest possible transmit power, while achieving a low Frame Error Ratio (FER). With the same motivation of conserving battery energy, numerous power-aware routing algorithms have been proposed for improving the overall multiuser network´s energy-efficiency instead of improving a single link. Taking both these design factors into consideration, we employ Multi-Antenna aided Relays (MA-Rs) in the context of ad hoc networks, which use a three-stage concatenated transceiver constituted by an Irregular Convolutional Code, Unity-Rate Code and Space-Time Trellis Code (IrCC-URC-STTC) equipped with two antennas. All other mobiles are single-antenna assisted nodes and refrain from relaying, hence they dispense with STTC schemes and use a two-stage concatenated IrCC-URC coding scheme. It is confirmed that as expected, in a high-node-density scenario the average energy consumption per information bit and per node becomes about a factor two lower than that in the equivalent Single-Antenna Relay (SA-R) aided networks.