Performance analysis of switch‐and‐examine diversity systems with interference and Rayleigh fading channels

This paper studies the behavior of the low‐complexity switch‐and‐examine diversity combining (SEC) and switch‐and‐examine diversity combining with post‐examine selection (SECps) antenna selection schemes with interference. In this paper, we first derive the cumulative distribution function (CDF) of the end‐to‐end (e2e) signal‐to‐interference plus noise ratio at the selection scheme combiner output. This CDF is then used to derive closed‐form expressions for the e2e outage and symbol error probabilities for the independent nonidentically distributed and independent identically distributed cases of diversity branches. In the analysis, the channels of the desired user and the interferers are assumed to follow Rayleigh distribution. Furthermore, to have more details about the system insights, the performance is evaluated at the high signal‐to‐noise ratio (SNR) values where the diversity order and coding gain are derived and analyzed. The derived analytical and asymptotic results are validated via a comparison with Monte‐Carlo simulations. Main findings show that with interference power does not scale with average SNR; the system can still achieve performance gain when more receive antennas are used. This happens at the values of switching threshold that are close to average SNR. Also, results illustrate that the interference is noticeably affecting the gain achieved in system performance when more antennas are used. Furthermore, findings show that the SECps selection scheme outperforms the conventional SEC scheme when more antennas are added with the switching threshold is much larger than the average SNR. Finally, findings show that the SEC and SECps antenna selection schemes are efficient for systems which operate at the range of low SNR values and this makes them attractive candidates to be implemented in the emerging mobile broadband communication systems. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Switching rate and receiver performance of binary modulations with the selection‐and‐stay combining over independent and correlated Nakagami‐m fading channels

The dual‐branch selection‐and‐stay combining (SSTC) is analyzed for diversity reception on independent and correlated Nakagami‐m fading channels, where the conventional selection combining (SC) is employed only at the switching instance, and the receiver uses the selected branch till its signal‐to‐noise ratio (SNR) estimation is lower than a preset threshold. In this combining scheme, the receiver only needs to continuously estimate the SNR of the single selected branch. For the performance analysis of SSTC, the switching rate and the average bit error rates (BERs) of different binary coherent and non‐coherent modulations are evaluated. Numerical results based on the analysis and simulations are illustrated. According to the analysis and numerical results, the SSTC outperforms the existing switch‐and‐stay combining in the senses of the average BER and switching rate. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Nelder‐Mead–based power optimization for secrecy enhancement in amplify‐and‐forward cooperative relay networks

Cooperative communication based on relaying nodes has been considered as a promising technique to increase the physical layer security (PLS) performance in wireless communications. In this paper, an optimal power allocation (OPA) scheme based on Nelder‐Mead (NM) algorithm is proposed for improving the secrecy rate of amplify‐and‐forward (AF) cooperative relay networks employing cooperative jamming (CJ) scheme. The proposed hybrid jamming scheme allows the source and selected relay to transmit the jamming signal along with the information to confound the eavesdropper. The path selection probability of ant colony optimization (ACO) algorithm is used for selecting the relay for transmission. The performance based on secrecy rate is evaluated for “n” trusted relays distributed dispersedly between the source and destination. Gradient‐based optimization and three‐dimensional exhaustive search methods are used as benchmark schemes for comparison of the proposed power optimization algorithm. The secrecy performance is also compared with conventional AF scheme and CJ scheme without power optimization (EPA). The impact of single and multiple relays on secrecy performance is also evaluated. Numerical results reveal that, compared with the gradient method and exhaustive search algorithm, the proposed power allocation strategy achieves optimal performance. Also, the derived OPA results show a significantly higher secrecy rate than the EPA strategy for both CJ and AF schemes.     

Particle swarm optimization–based power allocation for Alamouti amplify and forward relaying protocol

The performance of wireless communication systems is improved over flat fading channel by using Alamouti coding scheme, which provides the quality of diversity gain. In this paper, performance analysis of symbol error rate (SER) and particle swarm optimization (PSO)–based power allocation (PA) for Alamouti amplify and forward (AF) relaying protocol using maximum ratio combining (MRC) technique is presented. Analytical expression of SER upper bound and SER approximation is derived for Alamouti AF relaying protocol with quadrature phase shift keying (QPSK) modulation over Rayleigh fading channel and Rician fading channel. In addition, PSO‐based optimum PA factor is calculated on the basis of the minimum SER of proposed method. PSO‐based optimum PA gives 0.5 dB of improved signal‐to‐noise ratio (SNR) compared with the equal power allocation (EPA). The theoretical approximate SER result is compared with the simulated SER. The proposed protocol provides full diversity gain and reduces SER compared with the existing AF and decode and forward (DF) relaying protocols over Rayleigh fading channel and Rician fading channel.     

Exact analysis of the multihop multibranch hybrid AF/DF relaying networks

In this paper, the exact analysis of a multihop multibranch (MHMB) relaying network is investigated wherein each relay can operate in amplify‐and‐forward (AF) or decode‐and‐forward (DF) modes depending upon the decoding result of its received signal. If a relay decodes the received signal correctly, it works in DF mode; otherwise, the relay operates in AF mode. Therefore, we name such relaying network as hybrid amplify‐and‐forward and decode‐and‐forward (hybrid AF/DF) relaying network. We first investigate the signal transmission from source to destination node via n number of relays in a hybrid AF/DF MHMB mode. Then, we obtained the statistical features and analyze the end‐to‐end signal‐to‐noise ratio (SNR). Finally, a comprehensive performance analysis is conducted by using maximal ratio combining (MRC) scheme at the destination node. For comparison, we also obtained the results using selection combining (SC) scheme at the destination node. To the best of our knowledge, very few works in the literature have considered a general system model of MHMB relaying network wherein each relay can operate in AF or DF modes, that is, a hybrid AF/DF relaying network. Accordingly, the analysis of our system model is not only novel and exact, but also is comprehensive and can be employed in the future works.     

Performance analysis of selective cooperation in amplify‐and‐forward relay networks over identical Nakagami‐m channels

In cooperative communications, multiple relays between a source and a destination can increase the diversity gain. Because all the nodes must use orthogonal channels, multiple‐relay cooperation becomes spectrally inefficient. Therefore, a bestrelay selection scheme was recently proposed. In this paper, we analyzed the performance of this scheme for a system with the relays operating in amplify‐and‐forward mode over identical Nakagami‐m channels using an exact source–relay–destination signal‐to‐noise ratio (SNR).We derived accurate closed‐form expressions for various system parameters including the probability density function of end‐to‐end SNR, the average output SNR, the bit error probability, and the channel capacity. The analytical results were verified through Monte Carlo simulations. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Wireless information and power transfer using single and multiple path relays

A relay‐based wireless communication model can relay information along with the power bidirectionally using the amplify‐and‐forward scheme. This paper studies such model extensively. Three information and power relaying protocols, that is, time‐based switching relaying, power‐based splitting relaying, and hybrid time switching‐based and power splitting‐based relaying (HTPSR) are used to carry forward bidirectional information and power transfer. First, a solo relay model is studied, for which, we derived a throughput expression for end‐to‐end information transfer, and this is done for all the three relaying protocols. The paper indicates that the system throughput depends upon the time switching and the power splitting ratio. Further, to make the system more reliable and robust, multiple relays are used in the path. Various relay selection schemes are used for path selection in each transmission, thereby yielding different throughput performances. The results show that an optimal throughput is obtained for a given relay location at an optimal set of values of splitting and switching ratio. Moreover, the HTPSR outperforms both the power splitting and time switching protocol in system throughput performance for a single as well as a multiple‐relay model. Whereas, in relay selection schemes, the best SNR selection scheme outperforms in all the schemes used. The simulated results confirm that the system throughput is an active function of relay placement.     

An opportunistic relaying‐based incremental hybrid DAF cooperative system

In this paper, an opportunistic relaying‐based incremental hybrid decode‐amplify‐forward (OR‐IHDAF) scheme that combines robust protocol switch with efficient relay selection is proposed in multi‐relay scenario to cope with the complex and variable channel environments. The proposed OR‐IHDAF scheme can improve the system performance significantly compared with the incremental hybrid decode‐amplify‐forward protocol with the increase of the possible candidate relay nodes and opportunistic relay selection. The analytical expression of the system outage probability of the OR‐IHDAF scheme is presented based on the probability density function and cumulative distribution function, which might be useful to avoid lengthy simulations. Numerical results show the correctness of our theoretical analysis and the performance improvement of the OR‐IHDAF scheme compared with the other current hybrid cooperative protocols and OR‐based cooperative schemes. The effects of the power allocation schemes on the outage probability are also provided. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Comparative performance analysis of cooperative and multi dual‐hop relay networks using MGF approach

In this paper, we analyzed and compared the performance of cooperative diversity systems such as cooperative and multi dual‐hop networks with non‐regenerative relay nodes. The contributions of this study are twofolds. Firstly, analytical expressions of outage probability P_out and average symbol error rate ASER are derived using moment generating function (MGF) analysis of the received SNR with the assumption that the channel experiences Weibull fading and the best relay selection is used. Then, using the analytical results, comparative performance evaluation of cooperative and multi dual‐hop relay networks is done for varying number of relay nodes and different receive diversity schemes such as maximal ratio combining (MRC) and selection combining (SC). The results show that the cooperative relay network has better performance than a multi dual‐hop relay network in terms of P_out and ASER. The results also show that the multi dual‐hop network can achieve the same performance as the cooperative network with the requirement that it needs the deployment of three times more relay nodes.     

Conventional and modified TAS/OSTBC schemes in dual‐hop fixed‐gain amplify‐and‐forward relaying systems with imperfect feedback

Modified transmit antenna selection (TAS)/orthogonal space‐time block coding (OSTBC) (M‐TAS/OSTBC) schemes have been shown to achieve superior error performance together with a reduced‐rate feedback channel in the presence of feedback errors (FEs) when compared with the conventional TAS/OSTBC (C‐TAS/OSTBC) schemes. This paper focuses on the bringing of fixed‐gain amplify‐and‐forward (FGAF) relaying schemes that employ M‐TAS/OSTBC schemes at both hops that provides reduced feedback‐rate and robust error performance in the presence of erroneous‐feedback channels. The exact expressions of the outage and error probabilities for both dual‐hop FGAF relaying schemes in Nakagami‐m fading channels have been derived and validated via Monte Carlo simulations. Additionally, with the help of high signal‐to‐noise ratio (SNR) (i.e., asymptotic) approaches and some analytical approximations, the asymptotic diversity order analysis has been carried out. Besides, by providing a simulation‐based examination on the inclusion of power allocation within the modified scheme, the additional advantages on the performance have been exhibited. The extensive investigation and comparisons to the conventional schemes have shown that M‐TAS/OSTBC schemes employed at each transmission link provide full diversity order and considerable error performance as the C‐TAS/OSTBC scheme in ideal feedback cases and also achieve more robust error performance in the presence of FEs. Thus, by using M‐TAS/OSTBC schemes, the overall performances of the dual‐hop FGAF relaying schemes have been enhanced, which would result in reductions on the average SNR requirements to achieve a specified error rate constraint. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Error performance for relaying protocols with multiple decode‐and‐forward relays

This paper investigates the error performance of three relaying protocols with multiple decode‐and‐forward relays. In the first protocol, relays that can decode correctly will forward the signals from source. Nevertheless, selection cooperation (SC) and opportunistic relaying (OR) are adopted to select only a single relay to forward in the other two protocols, respectively. At sufficiently high signal‐to‐noise ratio, the upper bounds on bit error probability are derived for three protocols, where the developments apply for various channel fading models. Simulation results are provided to verify the tightness of the analytical bounds, and the performance comparisons among different relaying protocols are presented. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Performance analysis of two‐way wireless‐powered Amplify‐and‐Forward relaying in the presence of co‐channel interference

In this paper, we investigate the performance assessment of a bidirectional relaying system using energy harvesting techniques. We assume independent and nonidentically distributed (i.n.i.d.) Nakagami‐m fading channels where the amplify‐and‐forward relay is subject to co‐channel interference (CCI) due to transmissions of other transmitters. Two different scenarios, namely, scenario I and scenario II are evaluated. In scenario I, both end‐sources provide the required energy for the relay, whereas the relay also harvests energy from the co‐channel interferes. Then, in the first phase of cooperation, both end‐sources send the information to the relay, and after amplifying the received signal, relay transfers information to the appropriate destination in the second time‐slot. In the scenario II, both end‐sources harvest energy from the relay. After that, the information cooperative transmission is done similar to the first scenario. For both considered scenarios, tight closed‐form expressions of outage probability, symbol error probability, ergodic capacity, and throughput are obtained at arbitrary signal‐to‐noise‐ratios (SNRs). To get more insights, simplified high SNR results for both scenarios are also deduced where the diversity orders are obtained. Monte Carlo simulation results are presented to validate the correctness of our proposed analysis. Our results explicitly demonstrate that the first scenario has a better performance than the second one in the medium and high SNR region, whereas the second scenario outperforms the first one in the low SNR regime.     

An amplify‐and‐forward and decode‐and‐forward mixed relay communication system and its performance analysis

A kind of amplify‐and‐forward (AF) and decode‐and‐forward (DF) mixed relay communication system is proposed in this letter. The source broadcasts the signal to all the relays. Relays that can decode the signal adopt DF scheme to retransmit the signal, while the rest adopt AF scheme for retransmission. The destination employs maximum ratio combining technique to maximize the received signal‐to‐noise ratio. Another situation concerned in this letter is that when the relay cannot decode the source signal, it may retransmit the interference signal with AF scheme. Closed‐form expressions of outage probability are derived. Simulation results show that the analytical curves agree with the simulated ones very well, and the AF‐DF mixed relay system can improve the availability of the relays. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Interference management schemes for multi‐user cooperative wireless networks

Cooperative communication is a promising technique for future wireless networks. It can be used in improving communication reliability and enhancing spectrum efficiency by using the broadcast nature of radio communication and exploiting cooperative diversity. However, its performance gain degrades in the presence of co‐channel interference, which makes it essential to propose interference mitigation schemes. In this paper, we introduce three cooperative communication schemes with interference management for multi‐user cooperative wireless networks. The first scheme (best relay selection) is used as a performance benchmark because it completely avoids the interference problem by using the Frequency‐Division Multiple Access technique. The second scheme (best available relay selection) maximizes the received signal‐to‐noise ratio while keeping the interference levels below a certain threshold, and the third scheme (General Order Relay and User Selection) is based on iterative resource allocation algorithm. We derive exact closed‐form expressions of average bit error probability, outage probability, and average consumed power for the proposed schemes. Simulations are used to validate the analytical results. The results confirm the advantage of the proposed cooperation schemes in enhancing the system performance and improving the interference management. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Energy Savings in OFDM Systems through Cooperative Relaying

Energy savings in orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) systems is an active research area. In order to achieve a solution, we propose a new cooperative relaying scheme operated on a per subcarrier basis. This scheme improves the bit error rate (BER) performance of the conventional signal‐to‐noise ratio (SNR)‐based selection relaying scheme by substituting SNR with symbol error probability (SEP) to evaluate the received signal quality at the relay more reliably. Since the cooperative relaying provides spatial diversity gain for each subcarrier, thus statistically enhancing the reliability of subcarriers at the destination, the total number of lost subcarriers due to deep fading is reduced. In other words, cooperative relaying can alleviate error symbols in a codeword so that the error correction capability of forward error correction codes can be fully exploited to improve the BER performance (or save transmission energy at a target BER). Monte‐Carlo simulations validate the proposed approach.     

Power allocation and relay selection for AF two‐path successive relaying networks

Two‐path or successive relaying, which aims to establish two relay links transmitting different information symbols in adjacent time slots, has recently emerged as an attractive wireless communication protocol to improve the spectral efficiency in half‐duplex cooperative systems. In this paper, we investigate power allocation and relay selection techniques for amplify‐and‐forward two‐path successive relaying networks. Our approach is based on the maximization of the received SNR subject to a total power budget consumed by the source and the relay assisting this specific transmission. Two scenarios including with and without direct link are considered here. We show that the main problem has a closed‐form solution and only requires a few amounts of feedback bits to be broadcasted. Numerical results reveal that the proposed approaches are more insensitive to the inter‐relay interference and robust to channel estimation errors; meanwhile, they perform better than the existing schemes. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Performance analysis of spectrally efficient amplify‐and‐forward opportunistic relaying scheme for adaptive cooperative wireless systems

In this paper, we propose an adaptive amplify‐and‐forward (AF) relaying scheme that selects the best relay among the available relay nodes opportunistically to cooperate with a source node for improvement of the spectral efficiency. This improvement can be achieved by introducing a policy that gives the useful cooperative regions and defines a switching threshold signal‐to‐noise ratio that guarantees the bit error rate (BER) of cooperative transmission is below the target. We model all links as independent non‐identically distributed Rayleigh fading channels. We then derive closed‐form expressions for the average spectral efficiency, average BER, and outage probability when an upper bound for the signal‐to‐noise ratio of the end‐to‐end relay path is applied and adaptive discrete rate is considered. Numerical and simulation results show that the proposed scheme, compared with the outage‐based AF incremental relaying, AF fixed relaying, and the conventional direct transmission, can achieve the maximum average spectral efficiency while maintaining the average BER and outage probability. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Performance analysis and power allocation for decode‐and‐forward cooperative communications over Rician fading channel

This paper derives the asymptotic symbol error rate (SER) and outage probability of decode‐and‐forward (DF) cooperative communications over Rician fading channels. How to optimally allocate the total power is also addressed when the performance metric in terms of SER or outage probability is taken into consideration. Analysis reveals the insights that Rician factor has a great impact on the system performance as compared with the channel variance, and the relay–destination channel quality is of importance. In addition, the source–relay channel condition is irrelevant to the optimal power allocation design. Simulation and numerical evaluation substantiate the tightness of the asymptotic expressions in the high‐SNR regions and demonstrate the accuracy of our theoretical analysis. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Outage analysis of opportunistic multi-antenna relay selection in decode-and-forward relay networks

This article studies the closed-form expressions of outage performance for opportunistic relay under aggregate power constraint in decode-and-forward(DF)relay networks over Rayleigh fading channels,assuming that multiple antennas are available at the relay node.According to whether instantaneous signal-to-noise ratio(SNR)or average SNR can be utilized for relay selection,two opportunistic relay schemes,opportunistic multi-antenna relay selection(OMRS)and average best relay selection(ABRS)are proposed.The performances of both two schemes are evaluated by means of theoretical analysis and simulation.It is observed that OMRS is outage-optimal among multi-antenna relay selection schemes and closely approaches the beamforming(BF)scheme known as theoretical outage-optimal.Compared with previous single-antenna opportunistic relaying(OR)scheme,OMRS brings remarkable performance improvement,which is obtained from maximum ratio combining(MRC)and beamforming techniques.It is also shown that the performance of ABRS in asymmetric channels is close to OMRS in the low and median SNR range.     

Switch‐and‐examine combining with different new switch statistics for diversity over Rayleigh fading channels

Three schemes of multibranch switch‐and‐examine combining (MSEC) with switch statistics different from the signal‐to‐noise ratio used in the traditional MSEC are analyzed. For each diversity branch, with its fading factor a and low‐passed received signal r, the switch statistics for the three MSEC schemes considered in the paper are | r | , | ar | , and a linear combination of a and | r | , respectively. To illustrate the performances of the MSEC schemes, the average BER of each MSEC scheme with BPSK signaling is evaluated for independent and identically distributed Rayleigh fading channels. For performance optimization, the optimal switch thresholds of the MSEC schemes are obtained. Numerical results based on the analysis and simulations are presented for performance illustrations. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.