Performance of Incremental DF Cooperative Networks with the Nth Best-Relay over Identical Rayleigh Fading Channels

Cooperative diversity networks have recently been proposed as a promising technology to improve performance over fading channels. In this paper, we consider an incremental decode-and-forward (DF) cooperative diversity network which employs the Nth best relay when the best relay is unavailable due to issues such as scheduling or load balancing. The end-to-end performance of this cooperative network is analyzed over independent and identical Rayleigh fading channels. Closed form expressions for the bit error rate and channel capacity are derived, and results are presented to illustrate the performance of the network when the Nth best relay is employed.