Adaptive RCPC-based cooperative coding for coordinated multipoint transmission

Cooperative Communication enables a system to achieve a significant gain in coverage and capacity. In coded cooperation, channel coding is embedded in the cooperation strategy, and the optimal level of the cooperation between the nodes needs to be determined according to the channel conditions. Using RCPC codes, we propose an adaptive approach that relies on efficient reallocation of system resources. The implemented scheme is similar to incremental redundancy with the difference that it does not impose any overhead on the system. The principal idea here is to dynamically change the usage of the available transmission resources to allow adaptive adjustment of the effective coding rate of payloads according to the channel condition. The simulation results indicate a gain of 1–2 dB at low SNR regime that translates into better coverage and robustness of the system. The main feature of the proposed scheme is that the gain is achieved without any increase in the system overhead.