Exact capacity analysis of multihop transmission over amplify-and-forward relay fading channels

In this paper, we propose an analytical framework on the exact computation of the average capacity of multihop transmission over amplify-and-forward relay fading channels. Our approach relies on the algebraic combination of Mellin and Laplace transforms to obtain exact single integral expressions which can be easily computed by Gauss-Chebyshev Quadrature (GCQ) rule. As such, the derived results are a convenient tool to analyze the average capacity of multihop transmission over amplify-and-forward relay fading channels. As an application of the analytical framework on the exact computation of the average capacity of multihop transmission, some examples are accentuated for generalized Nakagami-m fading channels. Numerical and simulation results, performed to verify the correctness of the proposed formulation, are in perfect agreement.