Performance of Transmit Antenna Selection and Maximal-Ratio Combining in Dual Hop Amplify-and-Forward Relay Network over Nakagami-m Fading Channels

In this paper, we study end-to-end performance of transmit antenna selection (TAS) and maximal ratio combining (MRC) in dual hop amplify-and-forward relay network in flat and asymmetric Nakagami-m fading channels. In the network, source and destination communicate by the help of single relay and source-destination link is not available. Source and destination are equipped with multiple antennas, and relay is equipped with single antenna. TAS and MRC are used for transmission at the source and reception at the destination, respectively. The relay simply amplifies and forwards the signal sent by the source to the destination by using channel state information (CSI) based gain or fixed gain. By considering relay location, for CSI based and fixed relay gains, we derive closed-form cumulative distribution function, moments and moment generating function of end-to-end signal-to-noise ratio, and closed-form symbol error probability expression. Moreover, asymptotical outage probability and symbol error probability expressions are also derived for both CSI based and fixed gains to obtain diversity order of the network. Analytical results are validated by the Monte Carlo simulations. Results show that diversity order is minimum of products of fading parameter and number of antennas at the end in each hop. In addition, for optimum performance the relay must be closer to the source when the diversity order of the first hop is smaller than or equal to that of the second hop.