Average fade duration for amplify-and-forward relay networks in log-normal fading

We analyze the level crossing rate and the average fade duration of multihop amplify-and-forward relay networks. We obtain exact closed-form expressions for these statistics when the individual links are affected by log-normal fading with arbitrary autocorrelation. Using this analytical framework we characterize the dynamics of the equivalent multihop channel gain for different correlation models, and study the influence of sampling time, the number of hops and the relay mobility in the investigated scenarios.