Emulation of Cooperative Communication System on DSP Boards

Abstract

A communication environment with multiple transmitters and multiple receivers is inherently a competitive environment. The advantages of multiple‐input multipleoutput (MIMO) systems have been widely acknowledged; to the extent that certain transmit diversity methods have been incorporated into wireless standards. Although transmit diversity is clearly advantageous on a cellular base station, it may not be practical for other scenarios. Specifically, due to size, cost, or hardware limitations, a wireless agent may not be able to support multiple transmit antennas. To enhance system reliability and performance in resource‐limited wireless networks, a new class of methods called cooperative communication enables single antenna mobiles in a multi‐user environment to share their antennas and generate a virtual multiple‐antenna transmitter that allows them to achieve transmit diversity and hence establish a reliable link for communication. By making use of a basic three node system and single tap Rayleigh channel, we carried out performance comparison of the three cooperative protocols (Amplify and Forward, Detect and Forward, Decode and Forward). Their results based on bit error curves were compared with SISO system for detailed performance analysis. Negative SNR is also incorporated in the simulations. Moreover the communication model is also implemented on DSP Kit in real time for more realistic analysis.