Performance analysis and cooperation mode switch in HARQ-based relaying

We study the optimal, in terms of power-limited outage probability (OP), placement of the relay and investigate the effect of relay placement on the optimal cooperation mode of the source and the relay nodes. Using hybrid automatic repeat request (HARQ) based relaying techniques, general expressions for the OP and the average transmit power are derived. The results are then particularized to the repetition time diversity (RTD) protocol. The analytical expressions are used to find the transmit powers minimizing the power-limited OP. Our results demonstrate that adaptive power allocation reduces the OP significantly. For instance, consider a Rayleigh fading channel, an OP of 10 ³ and a maximum of 2 RTD-based retransmissions. Then, compared to equal power allocation, the required transmission signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) is reduced by 5 dB, if adaptive power allocation is utilized. Moreover, depending on the relay positions and the total power budget, the system should switch between the single-node transmission mode and the joint transmission mode, in order to minimize the outage probability.