In this contribution, we propose and investigate a novel scheme of two-layer multi-input multi-output (MIMO) systems employing network coding in the scenario of cooperative communication. The first MIMO layer of our system is constituted from an Irregular Convolutional Coded Unity Rate Coded Space Time Trellis Coded M-ary Phase Shift Keying (IrCC-URC-STTC-MPSK) schemes. The MIMO coding scheme is designed with the aid of Extrinsic Information Transfer (EXIT) charts for approaching the corresponding channel capacity in fast fading environment. The second Network Coding based Virtual-MIMO layer is incorporated into our system for coping with the bad effect of slow fading channels, which may not be handled by the first MIMO coding layer. Based on simulation results, our proposed scheme outperforms the conventional MIMO systems, where no cooperation is invoked for exploiting the diversity gain brought by the aiding of other users available in the system.
Turbo Trellis-Coded Hierarchical-Modulation Assisted Decode-and-Forward Cooperation
