Symbol Error Rate of Multi-Relay Decode-and-Forward Cooperative Communication Systems under Nakagami-m Fading

In this paper, we analyze the symbol error rate (SER) performance of multi-relay decode-and-forward (DF) cooperative communications. In the analysis, we focus on the scenario in which the source, destination and relay terminals are each equipped with single antenna transceiver and receiver, and the communication channels are assumed to experience generalized Nakagami-m fading. We consider that all the channel links are mutually independent and the destination terminal combines signals received from the source and relay terminals based on the principle of maximal ratio combining (MRC). Finally, we verify our analysis by comparing with another way of relaying.