Reed Muller coded-cooperative diversity for multiple relays with signal space diversity and MRC reception at the destination

Recently, Reed-Muller (RM) codes have been investigated for half-duplex coded-cooperative relay communication systems. RM coded-cooperative (RMCC) diversity promised considerably low encoding and decoding complexity as compared to its predecessor channel codes. In this paper, we investigate the bit error rate (BER) performance of RMCC diversity for multiple relays operating in half-duplex mode with binary phase shift keying (BPSK) and quadrature amplitude modulation such as 4-QAM. In order to improve the BER performance of 4-QAM modulation, we use well known signal space diversity (SSD) technique in the proposed system. At the destination, maximal ratio combining is used for signal detection and joint majority logic decoding is used to recover information transmitted at the destination. Monte Carlo simulations show that the RMCC diversity gains increase manifolds with inclusion of multiple relays and for higher modulation i.e., 4-QAM, SSD provides additional diversity gains over the conventional 4-QAM system. Theoretical expressions for average BER are also derived and are validated with the help of Monte Carlo simulations.