Performance of decode-and-forward multi-hop relay network with orthogonal space-time block coding over Nakagami-m fading channels

In this work, performance of multi-hop decode-and-forward relay network with orthogonal space-time block coding is investigated for flat Nakagami-m fading channels. Source and destination communicate with the assistance of relays without direct link. In the investigated network, the source, relays and the destination are equiped with multi-antenna and in each hop orthogonal space-time block coding and maximal-ratio like combiner are employed as transmit and receive diversity techniques, respectively. In this paper, by deriving cumulative distribution function of the signal-to-noise ratio, outage probability is obtained. Besides, symbol error probability expression is also derived for the studied system. In order to derive the diversity order asymptotic outage probability and symbol error probability expressions are derived. The analytical results for outage probability and symbol error probability are validated by Monte-Carlo simulations.