In this paper, we propose an incremental multinoderelaying protocol with arbitrary N-relay nodes that allows anefficient use of the channel spectrum. The destination combinesthe received signals from the source and the relays using maximalratio Combining (MRC). The transmission ends successfully oncethe accumulated signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) exceeds a predefinedthreshold. The number of relays participating in the transmissionis adapted to the channel conditions based on the feedbackfrom the destination. The use of incremental relaying allowsobtaining a higher spectral efficiency. Moreover, the symbol errorprobability (SEP) performance is enhanced by using MRC atthe relays. The use of MRC at the relays implies that eachrelay overhears the signals from the source and all previousrelays and combines them using MRC. The proposed protocoldiffers from most of existing relaying protocol by the fact that itcombines both incremental relaying and MRC at the relays fora multinode topology. Our analyses for a decode-and-forwardmode show that: (i) compared to existing multinode relayingschemes, the proposed scheme can essentially achieve the sameSEP performance but with less average number of time slots,(ii) compared to schemes without MRC at the relays, the proposedscheme can approximately achieve a 3 dB gain.
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