Distributed space-time block coding is a diversity technique to mitigate the effects of fading in multi-hop wireless networks, where multiple relay stages are used by a source to communicate with its destination. This paper proposes a new distributed space-time block code called the cascaded orthogonal space-time block code (COSTBC) for the case where the source and destination are equipped with multiple antennas and each relay stage has one or more single antenna relays. Each relay stage is assumed to have receive channel state information (CSI) for all the channels from the source to itself, while the destination is assumed to have receive CSI for all the channels. To construct the COSTBC, multiple orthogonal space-time block codes are used in cascade by the source and each relay stage. In the COSTBC, each relay stage separates the constellation symbols of the orthogonal space-time block code sent by the preceding relay stage using its CSI, and then transmits another orthogonal spac...
Rahul Vaze, Robert W. Heath Jr.