On the outage performance of relay systems in frequency selective fading channels

We consider a three-node wireless relay system with frequency selective quasi-static fading channels between the nodes. We assume practical constraints require the relay to operate in half-duplex mode and employ a low-complexity non-orthogonal amplify-forward protocol. Assuming full channel state information and optimal energy allocation between source and relay, we study upper bounds of the outage probability for such channels. Compared to relay systems in flat fading channels, our results reveal that the additional diversity offered by frequency selective fading channels significantly improves outage performance. The results also suggest, however, that relays may offer a limited improvement in diversity when multipath fading in the source-destination link is sufficiently rich.