Performance analysis of incremental relaying based on partial selection in multi-source multi-relay networks

In this paper, we propose an incremental relaying scheme based on partial selection in multi-source multi-relay networks. First, one source node with the best source-destination channel quality out of M available sources is selected. Based on the quality of the received signal, the destination decides whether relaying is needed or not. If the destination provides a negative acknowledgment via feedback, then the best relay according to partial selection among N available relays retransmits the source signal. The destination combines signals received from the best source and the partial best relay using maximal ratio combining (MRC). The destination node uses this scheme to reduce the excessive burden of MRC with all source nodes and relay nodes and minimize the required complexity and signaling overheard. Asymptotic expressions of bite error rate (BER) and outage probability for the system is derived. Numerical and simulation results show that the derived lower bound is tight enough and the performance is proportional to the number of independent relay nodes or source nodes. Furthermore, one can see that the source plays a more important role than the relay and two relay are enough.