On the Performance of Dual-Hop AF Relaying over Fading Channels with Arbitrary Parameters

A direct evaluation method is proposed to obtain numerical solutions for the performance metrics of dual-hop amplify-and-forward relaying systems. The proposed method accommodates any link fading distributions. The results obtained are precise while requiring less computational time than simulation, about 40 times less. The proposed solution is used to obtain precise results for the average symbol error probability, ergodic capacity and outage probability of systems operating over Nakagami-m fading links with arbitrary, non- integer fading parameter m. The new direct solution method allows the accurate assessment of the case of Nakagami-0.5 fading, the worst case fading scenario of Nakagami-m fading.