Ergodic capacity analysis of cooperative amplify-and-forward relay networks over generalized fading channels

This paper presents two new methods for evaluating the ergodic channel capacities of cooperative non-regenerative multirelay networks in a myriad of fading environments and under three distinct source-adaptive transmission policies: (i) optimal rate adaptation with a fixed transmit power; (ii) optimal joint power-and-rate adaptation; and (iii) truncated channel inversion with fixed rate. In contrast to the previous related works, our proposed unified analytical frameworks that are based on the moment generating function and/or the cumulative distribution function of end-to-end signal-to-noise ratio allow us to gain insights into how power assignment during different transmission phases, relay node placement, fade distributions, and dissimilar fading statistics across the distinct communication links impact the ergodic capacity, without imposing any restrictions on the channel fading parameters. Copyright (c) 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.