Symbol error probability of hop-by-hop beamforming in Nakagami-m fading

The symbol error probability (SEP) of amplify-and-forward (AF) multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) cooperative networks where beamforming is adopted at both the source and destination is investigated. In particular, the tight lower bound for SEP of AF MIMO relay systems is presented with hop-by-hop beamforming over independent, but not necessarily identically distributed, Nakagami-m fading channels. Furthermore, assessing the high SNR, an asymptotic SEP expression is derived which reveals the array and diversity gain. Numerical results are shown to verify the analysis in some representative scenarios.