Performance Analysis of Amplify-and- Forward Opportunistic Relaying in Rician Fading

This letter analyzes the performance of single relay selection cooperative wireless networks using amplify-and forward relaying. The network channels are modeled as independent, nonidentical, Rician distributed coefficients. We derive approximate formulas for the symbol error rate (SER) of the opportunistic relaying cooperative network. We first derive the PDF of the approximate value of the total SNR. Then, assuming M-PSK or M-QAM modulations, the PDF is used to determine the SER. For sufficiently large SNR, this letter derives the close-form average SER. The simplicity of the asymptotic results provides valuable insights into the performance of cooperative networks and suggests means of optimizing them. We also use simulation to verify the analytical results. Results show that the derived error rates are tight bounds particularly at medium and high SNR.