Linear detection for cooperative multiple-access transmission protocols

In this paper, we first propose a new cooperative multiple-access transmission protocol by utilizing the cooperation among the sources and external relays. The impact of linear detection methods on the reception reliability is then investigated, whereas many existing works rely on the ideal theoretic criterion, i.e., the capacity region of the multiple-access channel. Analytical results are developed to show that, for a scenario with K users and K relays, the proposed scheme can ensure a minimal diversity gain of (K + 1) achievable for all users, whereas conventional approaches can only achieve a diversity gain of 1. Numerical results are also provided to demonstrate the performance of the proposed protocol.