Bi-Directional Cooperative Relays for Transmitted Reference Pulse Cluster UWB Systems

Transmitted reference pulse cluster (TRPC) was recently proposed for low data rate ultra-wideband (UWB) communications due to its robust performance, higher data rate, enhanced reliability and lower implementation complexity compared to the conventional transmitted reference technique. In this paper, we study bi-directional cooperative relay strategies for TRPC UWB networks to extend the coverage and improve the network performance. Several novel cooperative strategies have been proposed, based on a newly defined channel quality indictor that can be easily obtained at relays. These relay approaches do not require estimating the UWB channel state information. Simulation results have demonstrated the effectiveness of the proposed cooperation strategies.