Blind MBER based selection diversity combining in amplify and forward relay protocol in Rayleigh fading environments

In this paper, we propose a probabilistic combining in amplify and forward relay protocol in Rayleigh faded wireless cooperative communication systems. This probabilistic combining works on minimum bit error rate (MBER) criterion using the closed form expression for the probability density function (pdf) of the signal to noise ratio at the output of the selection combiner in an amplify and forward relay channel. In this paper, we use this pdf to derive a minimum bit error rate based approach to diversity combining. To the best of our knowledge, the assumption of the fading pdf has never been incorporated in the MBER cost function for diversity combining in a fading cooperative-relay environment. The proposed contribution is compared to selection combining in imperfect channel state information (CSI) scenarios.