Decode-and-Forward Cooperative Networks with Relay Selection

In this paper, we focus on the decode-and-forward (DF) cooperative networks with relay selection. Many detection schemes have been proposed for the DF; but it has been shown that the cooperative maximum ratio combining (C-MRC) can achieve almost the same performance as the optimum maximum likelihood detector and has a much lower complexity. Therefore, we first combine the C-MRC with the relay selection and show that it achieves the full diversity order by deriving an upper bound of its average bit error rate (BER). In order to reduce the signaling overhead in the C-MRC with relay selection, a novel detection scheme, namely product MRC (P-MRC), is proposed for the DF and it achieves the same diversity order as the C-MRC. Then we combine the P-MRC with the relay selection and show that it achieves the full diversity order by deriving an upper bound of its average BER.