Ergodic capacity of decode-and-forward relay strategies over general fast fading channels

Proposed is a novel ergodic capacity formula for decode-and-forward (DF) relaying over a very general fast fading channel model, i.e. the channel gains of the links follow independent but non-necessarily identically distributed Nakagami-m distributions. The proposed formula is validated by Monte Carlo simulations and can be computed efficiently. Since the considered channel model is very general, the proposed formula is appropriate for evaluating the performance of DF relaying in a wide variety of realistic wireless channel environments.