A precoded OFDMA system with user cooperation

Abstract

A new cooperative scheme for a two-user orthogonal frequency division multiple access (OFDMA) uplink communication scenario is proposed. Each user is equipped with one transmit/receive antenna. Before transmission, inter-block linear precoding is introduced to pairs of blocks. The cooperative transmission is implemented in cycles of three time slots. During each slot, a user transmits either his data, or a weighted mixture of his data and the data that he received in previous slots of the same cycle. The weights are obtained in an optimum fashion, so that a user that faces deep fading on certain subcarriers can benefit from the other user's channel, without taxing significantly the resources of that user. It is shown that the proposed scheme achieves the maximum available diversity for both users (full cooperation), or for the weak user (half cooperation) without increasing the number of antennas needed as compared to an energy-equivalent noncooperative OFDMA system that also uses inter-block precoding. Further, the proposed use of inter-block precoding allows one to exploit the cooperation induced diversity in 1.5 slots on the average; 2 slots would be needed if intra-block precoding was used instead.