Abstract: For the rate reduction induced by using cyclic redundancy check (CRC) in coded cooperation, an improved threshold selection relaying scheme is proposed for coded cooperation. The upper bound of the bit error rate (BER) is derived when using rate-compatible punctured convolutional codes, and an optimum threshold (OT) is obtained by minimizing the BER. The cooperative user decides whether to relay or not by comparing the estimated signal to noise ratio (SNR) with the threshold. Simulations show that with the OT and power allocation method, the scheme has a better improvement over the CRC scheme.

Key words: cooperative diversity, threshold selection, coded cooperation, signal to noise ratio, Rayleigh fading