Electronics 2021, 10(5), 570; https://doi.org/10.3390/electronics10050570

The relaying technologies in co-operative systems are considered a core element in actual and future wireless communications, assisting the network by enhancing its reliability and improving its capability through exploiting co-operativity. In this paper, a co-operative system testbed based on Software Defined Radio (SDR) through Universal Software Radio Peripherals (USRPs) and the MatlabTM$$ software is presented. The main novelty in this development of the platform is the implementation of 4G signal features, such as Physical Downlink Shared Channel (PDSCH) and Downlink Shared Channel (DL-SCH) for transport channel coding, which is one of the main contribution of the paper. The developed Multi-Input and Multi-Output (MIMO) SDR co-operative platform is capable of developing prototypes for the Relay Nodes. More specifically, the Amplify-&-Forward (A&F)—with or without Zero Forcing (ZF) and Minimum Mean Square Error (MMSE) Pre-Equalization—and Decode-&-Forward (D&F) protocols were implemented. Both Single-Input and Single-Output (SISO) and MIMO modes are supported by our testbed. The developed A&F and D&F MIMO co-operative systems in this paper utilize Orthogonal Space-Frequency Block Codes (OSFBCs) for the transmission of data symbols from the source to the destination. Our results show that relay nodes can substantially improve the Bit Error Rate (BER) and throughput in communications between the eNodeB (eNB) and User Equipment (UE). In particular, the maximum throughput achieved by conventional MIMO A&F is 9.3Mbps$$ at SNR=16dB$$, which is 4Mbps$$ higher than throughput of MIMO Non-Co-operative. It also shows the capacity improvement when considering the pre-equalization in the A&F schemes, compared to the conventional A&F Relay Node. For example, with MIMO A&F-MMSE pattern, a value of 11.8 Mbps is achieved for SNR=16dB$$, which is 84.8 % of the maximum system throughput (13.95 Mbps). On the other hand, the obtained results with D&F schemes far exceed those obtained with A&F strategies, achieving the maximum performance with the 2 × 2 MIMO D&F protocol from SNR=8dB$$. Furthermore, this work constitutes a first stage to the implementation of a 5G New-Radio Co-operative System platform.