Relay selection from an effective capacity perspective

In this work, we consider a cooperative network where multiple relay nodes having different modulation capabilities assist the end-to-end communication between a source and its destination. Firstly, we evaluate the effective capacity (EC) performance of the network under study. According to the analysis, an EC-based relay selection criterion is proposed. Based on the proposed selection rule and half-duplex decode-and-forward protocol, the activated relays cooperatively help with the packet transmission from the source. At the destination, packet combining is taken into account to improve the quality of service. Compared to the popular scheme, opportunistic relay selection, numerical results are provided to prove the validity and advantages of our proposed scheme in certain scenarios. Moreover, the analysis presented herein offers a convenient tool to the relaying transmission design, specifically on which relay selection scheme should be used as well as how to choose the receiving strategy between with and without packet combining at the destination.