Selection Relaying Protocols for Cooperative Communication Networks with Channel Estimation Errors

This work presents a performance analysis of selection relaying protocols for cooperative networks with multiple relay nodes in presence of channel estimation errors. In the selection scenario, a best protocol between Amplify-and-Forward (AF) and Decode-and-Forward (DF) is selected according to the source-relays links qualities to forward the signal to the destination. We derive the end-to-end signal to noise ratio (SNR) and establish a closed-form expression for the outage probability with estimation errors. After deriving a lower and upper bounds on the effective SNR, we then bound the outage probability and show that our scheme maintains full diversity order when the coefficient errors decrease significantly with increasing the SNR. Simulations are presented to validate the theoretical analysis and to show the significant advantage of selection relaying protocols in cooperative networks with channel estimation errors.