Abstract

This paper proposes a new distributed space-time block code (DSTBC) over frequency-selective fading channels for two-hop amplify and forward relay networks, consisting of a source node (), two relay nodes ( and ), and a destination node (). The proposed DSTBC is designed to achieve maximal spatial diversity gain and decoupling detection of data blocks with a low-complexity receiver. To achieve these two goals, uses zero-sequence padding, and relay nodes precode the received signals with a proper precoding matrix. The pairwise error probability (PEP) analysis is provided to investigate the achievable diversity gain of the proposed DSTBC for a general channel model in which one hop is modeled by Rayleigh fading and the other by Rician fading. This mixed Rayleigh-Rician channel model allows us to analyze two typical scenarios where are in the neighborhood of either or .