Multihop transmissions with non-regenerative relays over fading channels

End-to-end performance of multihop wireless communication systems with non-regenerative channel state information (CSI)-assisted relays operating over independent not necessarily identically Weibull fading channels is presented. With the aid of the inequality between harmonic and geometric means, the end-to-end signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) is bounded. By considering the product of rational powers of N Weibull random variables, novel expressions are derived for the moment-generating, probability density, and cumulative distribution functions in closed form. Using these results, convenient closed-form bounds are obtained for the average end-to-end SNR, the channel capacity and the average bit-error probability of multihop wireless communication systems. The tightness of the proposed bounds is verified by performing comparisons between numerical evaluation and computer simulations results.