Distributed Space-Time Block Coding for Barrage Relay Networks

Abstract

We propose a fully distributed space-time block coding (FD-STBC) technique for barrage relay networks (BRNs) which is specifically designed for military tactical mobile ad hoc networks (MANETs). The BRNs are based on a rapid and robust flooding protocol with two network capabilities: time-division multiple access (TDMA) and autonomous cooperative communication, whereby relays' simultaneous transmission of common packets results in cooperative diversity. Unfortunately, however, the existing phase rotation (PR)-based cooperation scheme cannot exploit the spatial diversity gain. Therefore, we apply the FD-STBC instead of the PR to relays, especially exploiting a complex hypersphere-based randomization matrix. It is noteworthy that the proposed FD-STBC-based BRN remarkably outperforms the conventional BRN even in a network with only two relays. Furthermore, we mathematically analyze the end-to-end performance of the proposed FD-STBC-based BRN in terms of outage probability.