Efficient performance evaluation of cooperative non-regenerative relay networks

The joint optimization of power allocation and relay position is known to be a frightening problem in the analysis of cooperative relay communication. In this article, we present an efficient framework that tackles this problem for 2-hop cooperative amplify-and-forward (CAF) multi-relay system over generalized fading channel. First, we consider single CAF relay where we investigate (i) the optimum power allocation when the relay is position is fixed, (ii) the optimum relay position when the power allocation is fixed and (iii) the joint optimization of power allocation and the relay position. We then tackle the multi-relay optimization by reducing the multi-parameter search problem to only a 2-parameter search. Our mathematical framework does not only allow us to solve this problem but to solve it in a unified manner over various fading channels. Our analysis also took into consideration the effect of dissimilarity of the channel condition of the relay path on the optimization. This provides additional dimension and new insight on the optimization problem. Numerical results have been presented for representative cases and after careful review of previous works on this subject, we can conclude that our contribution is new, and can be very useful in the deployment of highly efficient CAF relay networks.