Performance of Amplify-and-Forward Cooperative Communications with the N^{th} Best-Relay Selection Scheme over Nakagami-m Fading Channels

This letter derives the asymptotic symbol error rate (SER) of amplify-and-forward (AF) cooperative communications with the N^th best-relay scheme over independent and non-identical Nakagami-m fading channels. The diversity gain has been analyzed and examined as well. Simulation and numerical evaluation show the tightness of such an approximation in the high SNR regions and the accuracy of our theoretical analysis.