In this paper, the multinode amplify-and-forward cooperative communications for a network of N nodes is studied via\nthe novel concept of many-to-many space-time network coding (M2M-STNC). Communication under the M2M-STNC\nscheme is performed over two phases: (1) the broadcasting phase and (2) the cooperation phase. In the former phase,\neach node broadcasts its data symbol to all the other nodes in the network in its allocated time slot, while in the latter\nphase, simultaneous transmissions from N - 1 nodes to a destination node take place in their time slot. In addition,\nthe M2M-STNC scheme with optimal node selection (i.e., M2M-STNC-ONS) is proposed. In this scheme, the optimal\nrelay node is selected based on the maximum harmonic mean value of the source, intermediate, and destination\nnodes� scaled instantaneous channel gains. Theoretical symbol-error-rate analysis for M-ary phase shift keying (M-PSK)\nmodulation is derived for both the M2M-STNC and M2M-STNC-ONS schemes. Also, the effect of timing synchronization\nerrors and imperfect channel state information on the SER performance and achievable rates is analytically studied. It\nis shown that the proposed M2M-STNC-ONS scheme outperforms the M2M-STNC scheme and is less sensitive to\ntiming offsets and channel estimation errors. It is envisioned that the M2M-STNC-ONS scheme will serve as a potential\nmany-to-many cooperative communication scheme with applications spanning sensor and mobile ad hoc networks.
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