SER of Amplify-and-Forward Cooperative Networks with OSTBC Transmission in Nakagami-m Fading

In this paper, we study the symbol error rate (SER) performance of dual-hop multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) cooperative relay networks with orthogonal space-time block coding (OSTBC) transmission over independent, not necessarily identical Nakagami-m fading channels. Our analysis considers channel state information (CSI)-assisted amplify-and-forward (AF) relaying with the availability of the direct communication from the source to the destination. In particular, we derive a closed-form expression for moment generating function (MGF) of the instantaneous signal-to-noise ratio (SNR). Utilizing this result, we can analyze the SER performance of the considered systems for M-ary phase shift-keying (M-PSK) and M-ary quadrature amplitude (M-QAM) modulations. We further investigate the cooperative diversity behavior of the considered relay systems by deriving asymptotic approximations of SER in the high SNR regime. Finally, representative numerical results are presented showing an excellent agreement with the Monte-Carlo simulations which validates our analysis.