End-to-end performance of dual-hop semi-blind relaying systems with partial relay selection

The end-to-end performance of dual-hop cooperative links using semi-blind (fixed gain) relays and partial relay selection is investigated. The selection scheme considers that the source monitors the connectivity among the nodes (relays) of the first hop only. This scheme is interesting in practical ad-hoc and sensor networks. In our analysis, compact closed-form expressions are obtained for the outage probability, probability density function, moment generating functions, and generalized moments of the end-to-end signal-to-noise ratio(SNR), from which other relevant statistics that well-describe the distribution of the end-to-end SNR, such as mean, variance, kurtosis, skewness, and amount of fading, can also be deduced. Furthermore, the dynamic behavior of the end-to-end envelope is investigated, and the corresponding level crossing rate and average fade duration are obtained in an exact manner. Also, tight lower and upper bounds for these second-order statistics are presented in closed-form. Numerical results illustrating the system´s performance in terms of the above metrics are provided, and the influence of the relay selection on performance is analyzed and discussed. For instance, it is shown that the power imbalance between the hops may have positive or negative effects on the overall system performance irrespective of the number of selected relays.