Average capacity and signal-to-noise ratio analysis of multi-antenna regenerative cooperative relay in Rayleigh fading channel

Performance of infrastructure-based fixed relay having multiple antennas has been analysed. Closed form expressions of average capacity and end-to-end received signal-to-noise ratio for such system are derived for Rayleigh fading channels. Here, relay and destination may perform either maximum ratio combining or selection combining of the signals. The effect of relay position and number of relay antennas in various path-loss conditions have been studied for all four combinations of combining schemes. The investigations reported in this study are expected to be useful in design of multi-antenna cooperative relay system.