Single-Symbol ML Decodable Distributed STBCs for Partially-Coherent Cooperative Networks

Space-time block codes (STBCs) that are single-symbol decodable (SSD) in a co-located multiple antenna setting need not be SSD in a distributed cooperative communication setting. A relay network with N relays and a single source-destination pair is called a partially-coherent relay channel (PCRC) if the destination has perfect channel state information (CSI) of all the channels and the relays have only the phase information of the source-to-relay channels. In this paper, first, a new set of necessary and sufficient conditions for a STBC to be SSD for co-located multiple antenna communication is obtained. Then, this is extended to a set of necessary and sufficient conditions for a distributed STBC (DSTBC) to be SSD for a PCRC, by identifying the additional conditions. Using this, several SSD DSTBCs for PCRC are identified among the known classes of STBCs. It is proved that even if a SSD STBC for a co-located MIMO channel does not satisfy the additional conditions for the code to be SSD for a PCRC, single-symbol decoding of it in a PCRC gives full-diversity and only coding gain is lost. It is shown that when a DSTBC is SSD for a PCRC, then arbitrary coordinate interleaving of the in-phase and quadrature-phase components of the variables does not disturb its SSD property for PCRC. Finally, it is shown that the possibility of {\em channel phase compensation} operation at the relay nodes using partial CSI at the relays increases the possible rate of SSD DSTBCs from $\frac{2}{N}$ when the relays do not have CSI to 1/2, which is independent of N.