Performance analysis of TAS/SC-based MIMO decode-and-forward relaying for multi-hop transmission over Rayleigh fading channels

We first propose transmit antenna selection/selection combining (TAS/SC) based MIMO decode-and-forward (DF) relaying networks to simultaneously employ advantages offered by multi-hop relaying and TAS/SC. To investigate the system, we further propose to approximate the distribution of the end-to-end signal-to-noise ratio (SNR). The advantage of the proposed approximation resides mainly in the fact that it results in simple and mathematically tractable closed-form expression of the system performance metrics such as outage probability, ergodic capacity, symbol error rate and bit error rate thus offering clear insights on system behaviors. Monte-Carlo simulation results have been performed to cross-check the accuracy of the theoretical analysis showing that our proposed protocol outperforms the single-antenna-equipped multi-hop network in all range of operating SNRs. Under the constraint of spectral efficiency, the optimal number of hops is existed and a function of modulation schemes and path loss exponent.