Relay Selection Scheme for Multi-Hop Transmission of MU-MIMO System

Recently, wireless communication systems use a multi-hop transmission scheme using a relay to expand the cell coverage of the system. The multi-hop transmission scheme can expand the cell coverage of wireless communication systems. However, if an appropriate relay is not selected, errors generated during signal processing in the relay are transmitted to the receiver. Therefore, a relay selection scheme is essential for reliable multi-hop transmission. This paper proposes a relay selection scheme for reliable multi-hop transmission in a multi user-multiple input multiple output (MU-MIMO) system. The proposed relay selection scheme uses a MIMO channel matrix between the transmitter and relays to select an appropriate relay. The proposed relay selection scheme obtains the singular values of the MIMO channel matrix using the singular value decomposition (SVD). Then, the sum of the singular values is calculated, and the relay having the largest value is selected. Therefore, in the proposed relay selection scheme, although the transmitter only knows the channel information between the transmitter and relays, the transmitter can select an appropriate relay for reliable multi-hop transmission.