Comparison of Full-Duplex and Half-Duplex Modes with a Fixed Amplify-and-Forward Relay

We study the fundamental capacity trade-off between full-duplex and half-duplex transmission modes in a two- hop communication system with a fixed infrastructure-based amplify-and-forward relay. First, we derive closed-form expressions for the average end-to-end capacity in the relay link. We show that it may be better to tolerate some loop interference with the full-duplex mode than to consume channel resources by allocating two orthogonal channels with the half-duplex mode. Furthermore, we evaluate the maximum loop interference power levels that still allow the full-duplex mode to achieve the same capacity as the half-duplex mode. Our results indicate that with practical signal-to-noise ratio values, the full-duplex mode is preferable in terms of capacity.