Multi-antenna Decode and Forward Relay Selection over Nakagami-m Fading Channels

This paper analyzes the performance of opportunistic relay under aggregate power constraint in Decode-and-Forward (DF) relay networks over independent, non-identical, Nakagami-m fading channels, assuming multiple antennas are available at the relay node. According to whether instantaneous Signal-to-Noise Ratio (SNR) or average SNR can be exploited for relay selection, two opportunistic relay schemes, opportunistic multi-antenna relay selection (OMRS) and average best relay selection (ABRS) are proposed. The closed form expressions of outage probability and error performance for binary phase shift keying (BPSK) modulation of OMRS and ABRS are determined using the moment generating function (MGF) of the total signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) at the destination. Simulations are provided to verify the correctness of theoretical analysis. It is observed that OMRS is outage-optimal among multi-antenna relay selection schemes and approaches the Beamforming (BF) scheme known as theoretical outage-optimal very closely. Compared with previous single-antenna Opportunistic Relaying (OR) scheme, OMRS brings remarkable performance improvement obtained from maximum ratio combining (MRC) and beamforming, which proves that multiple antennas at the relays could provide more array gain and diversity order. It also shows that the performance of ABRS in asymmetric channels is close to OMRS in the low and median SNR range. © 2017, Springer Science+Business Media, LLC, part of Springer Nature.