On the Optimality of Successive Decoding in Compress-and-Forward Relay Schemes

In the classical compress-and-forward relay scheme developed by (Cover and El Gamal, 1979), the decoding process operates in a successive way: the destination first decodes the compressed observation of the relay, and then decodes the original message of the source. Recently, two modified compress-and-forward relay schemes were proposed, and in both of them, the destination jointly decodes the compressed observation of the relay and the original message, instead of successively. Such a modification on the decoding process was motivated by realizing that it is generally easier to decode the compressed observation jointly with the original message, and more importantly, the original message can be decoded even without completely decoding the compressed observation. Thus, joint decoding provides more freedom in choosing the compression rate at the relay, i.e., the relay's observation can be compressed at a rate higher than supportable by successive decoding. However, the question re...

• Type: Journal
• Year: 2010
• Where: CORR
• Authors: Xiugang Wu, Liang-Liang Xie
• Keywords: CORR 2010, Education, El Gamal, Original Message, Relays