Multihop Diversity for Fading Mitigation in Multihop Wireless Networks

The concept of multihop diversity is proposed, where all the nodes of a multihop link are assumed to have buffers for temporarily storing their received packets. During each time-slot, the best hop having, for example, the highest signal-to-noise ratio (SNR), is selected from the set of those hops that have packets awaiting transmission in the buffer. The packet is then transmitted over the best hop. This hop-selection procedure yields selection diversity, but it requires the global channel knowledge of the hops’ channel quality. In this paper, we assume having perfect channel knowledge and focus our attention on the principles and performance bounds of the error probability and outage probability. Our studies show that relying on multiple hops has the potential of providing a significant diversity gain, which may be exploited for enhancing the reliability of wireless multihop communications

Performance Analysis of Multihop Wireless Links over Generalized-K Fading Channels

The performance of multihop links is studied in this contribution by both analysis and simulations, when communicating over Generalized-$K$ ($K_G$) fading channels. The performance metrics considered include symbol error rate (SER), outage probability, level crossing rate (LCR) and average outage duration (AOD). First, the expressions for both the SER and outage probability are derived by approximating the probability density function (PDF) of the end-to-end signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) using an equivalent end-to-end PDF. We show that this equivalent end-to-end PDF is accurate for analyzing the outage probability. Then, the second-order statistics of LCR and AOD of multihop links are analyzed. Finally, the performance of multihop links is investigated either by simulations or by evaluation of the expressions derived. Our performance results show that the analytical expressions obtained can be well justified by the simulation results. The studies show that the $K_G$ channel model as well as the expressions derived in this paper are highly efficient for predicting the performance metrics and statistics for design of multihop communication links

On the Second Order Statistics of the Multihop Rayleigh Fading Channel

Second order statistics provides a dynamic representation of a fading channel and plays an important role in the evaluation and design of the wireless communication systems. In this paper, we present a novel analytical framework for the evaluation of important second order statistical parameters, as the level crossing rate (LCR) and the average fade duration (AFD) of the amplify-and-forward multihop Rayleigh fading channel. More specifically, motivated by the fact that this channel is a cascaded one and can be modeled as the product of N fading amplitudes, we derive novel analytical expressions for the average LCR and the AFD of the product of N Rayleigh fading envelopes (or of the recently so-called N*Rayleigh channel). Furthermore, we derive simple and efficient closed-form approximations to the aforementioned parameters, using the multivariate Laplace approximation theorem. It is shown that our general results reduce to the corresponding ones of the specific dual-hop case, previously published. Numerical and computer simulation examples verify the accuracy of the presented mathematical analysis and show the tightness of the proposed approximations

On the DMT of TDD-SIMO Systems with Channel-Dependent Reverse Channel Training

This paper investigates the Diversity-Multiplexing gain Trade-off (DMT) of a training based reciprocal Single Input Multiple Output (SIMO) system, with (i) perfect Channel State Information (CSI) at the Receiver (CSIR) and noisy CSI at the Transmitter (CSIT), and (ii) noisy CSIR and noisy CSIT. In both the cases, the CSIT is acquired through Reverse Channel Training (RCT), i.e., by sending a training sequence from the receiver to the transmitter. A channel-dependent fixed-power training scheme is proposed for acquiring CSIT, along with a forward-link data transmit power control scheme. With perfect CSIR, the proposed scheme is shown to achieve a diversity order that is quadratically increasing with the number of receive antennas. This is in contrast with conventional orthogonal RCT schemes, where the diversity order is known to saturate as the number of receive antennas is increased, for a given channel coherence time. Moreover, the proposed scheme can achieve a larger DMT compared to the orthogonal training scheme. With noisy CSIR and noisy CSIT, a three-way training scheme is proposed and its DMT performance is analyzed. It is shown that nearly the same diversity order is achievable as in the perfect CSIR case. The time-overhead in the training schemes is explicitly accounted for in this work, and the results show that the proposed channel-dependent RCT and data power control schemes offer a significant improvement in terms of the DMT, compared to channel-agnostic orthogonal RCT schemes. The outage performance of the proposed scheme is illustrated through Monte-Carlo simulations.Comment: Accepted for publication in IEEE Transactions on Communication