A Comparative Study of Relaying Schemes with Decode-and-Forward over Nakagami-m Fading Channels

Utilizing relaying techniques to improve performance of wireless systems is a promising avenue. However, it is crucial to understand what type of relaying schemes should be used for achieving different performance objectives under realistic fading conditions. In this paper, we present a general framework for modelling and evaluating the performance of relaying schemes based on the decode-and-forward (DF) protocol over independent and not necessarily identically distributed (INID) Nakagami-m fading channels. In particular, we present closed-form expressions for the statistics of the instantaneous output signal-to-noise ratio of four significant relaying schemes with DF; two based on repetitive transmission and the other two based on relay selection (RS). These expressions are then used to obtain closed-form expressions for the outage probability and the average symbol error probability for several modulations of all considered relaying schemes over INID Nakagami-m fading. Importantly, it is shown that when the channel state information for RS is perfect, RS-based transmission schemes always outperform repetitive ones. Furthermore, when the direct link between the source and the destination nodes is sufficiently strong, relaying may not result in any gains and in this case it should be switched-off.Comment: Submitted to Journal of Computer Systems, Networks, and Communication

Entropy and Channel Capacity under Optimum Power and Rate Adaptation over Generalized Fading Conditions

Accurate fading characterization and channel capacity determination are of paramount importance in both conventional and emerging communication systems. The present work addresses the nonlinearity of the propagation medium and its effects on the channel capacity. Such fading conditions are first characterized using information theoretic measures, namely, Shannon entropy, cross entropy and relative entropy. The corresponding effects on the channel capacity with and without power adaptation are then analyzed. Closed-form expressions are derived and validated through comparisons with respective results from computer simulations. It is shown that the effects of fading nonlinearities are significantly larger than those of fading parameters such as the scattered-wave power ratio, and the correlation coefficient between the in-phase and quadrature components in each cluster of multipath components.Comment: Latest/Priprint versio