An Alamouti-based path selection strategy for multihop relay communications

In this paper, we propose a modified Alamouti-based path selection (MAPS) strategy for multihop relay communication systems, and investigate a system performance in comparison with single path selection (SPS) and Alamouti-based path selection (APS) strategies. We also investigate the effect of a channel quality on the system performance when a channel is presumably good in the first hop and the last hop, respectively. Simulation results indicate that the proposed strategy achieves a better performance and gain more diversity than APS and SPS strategies. In addition, when the channel quality in the first hop is good, the system performance is superior to the case of good channel quality in the last hop.