Asymptotic Performance Analysis of Amplify-and-Forward

Cooperative Networks in a Nakagami-m Fading Environment

Behrouz Maham, Student Member, IEEE, and Are Hjrungnes, Senior Member, IEEE
AbstractThis letter analyzes the performance of repetition-
based cooperative wireless networks using amplify-and forward
relaying. The network consists of a source, R parallel relays,
and a destination, and the channel coefcients are distributed
as independent, non-identical, Nakagami-m. The approximated
average symbol error rate (SER) is investigated. For sufciently
large SNR, this letter derives a close-form average SER when m
is an integer. The simplicity of the asymptotic results provides
valuable insights into the performance of cooperative networks
and suggests means of optimizing them. We also use simulation
to verify the analytical results. Results show that the derived
error rates are tight approximations particularly at medium and
high SNR.
Index Terms Wireless relay networks, performance analysis,
Nakagami-m fading.
I. INTRODUCTION
Cooperative diversity networks technique is a promising
solution for the high data-rate coverage required in future
cellular and ad-hoc wireless communications systems. Coop-
erative transmissions have been categorized into space-time
coded cooperation (see, e.g., [1], [2]) and repetition-based
cooperation, in which relays retransmit the sources signal
in a time-division multiple-access (TDMA) manner (see, e.g.,
[35]).
In [4], the authors derived asymptotic average symbol
error rate (SER) for amplify-and-forward (AF) cooperative
networks. An exact average SER analysis for a AF cooperative
network is presented in [3]. An asymptotic analysis of the
SER of a selection AF network over Rayleigh fading channels
is studied in [6]. In [7], semianalytical lower-bounds of the
outage probability of single-branch AF multihop wireless sys-
tems over Nakagami-m fading channels is evaluated. Authors
in [8] derived the closed-form lower-bounds on the outage
probability and SER of single-branch AF multihop wireless
systems over Nakagami-m fading channels.
In this letter, we derive tight approximations for the average
SER of repetition-based cooperative networks over indepen-
dent non-identical Nakagami-m fading channels in AF mode.
We rst nd the approximated expression for the average
This work was supported by the Research Council of Norway through
the project 176773/S10 entitled "Optimized Heterogeneous Multiuser MIMO
Networks OptiMO". Behrouz Maham and Are Hjrungnes are with UNIK
University Graduate Center, University of Oslo, Norway. Behrouz Maham is
currently a visiting scholar at Department of Electrical Engineering, Stanford
University, USA. Emails: bmaham@stanford.edu,arehj@unik.no.
SER. For sufciently high SNR, we derive a simple closed-
form average SER expression for a network with multiple
cooperating branches. We verify the obtained analytical results
using simulations. Results show that the derived error rates are
tight bounds particularly at medium and high SNR.
II. SYSTEM MODEL
Consider a network consisting of a source, R relays, and
one destination. We denote the source-to-destination, source-
to-ith relay, and ith relay-to-destination links by h, f
i
, and
g
i
, respectively (see [2, Fig. 1] for an illustration of the
system model). Suppose each link has Nakagami-m fading,
independent of the others. Similar to [9], our scheme requires
two phases of transmission. During the rst phase, the source
node transmits a signal s(n), where n is the time index,
to all relays and the destination. The received signal at the
destination and the ith relay from the source in the rst phase
can be written as
y
0
(n) =

0
hs(n) + w
0
(n), (1a)
r
i
(n) =

0
f
i
s(n) + v
i
(n), (1b)
respectively, where
0
is the average total transmitted sym-
bol energy of the source, since we assume E{s
H
s} = 1,
and w
0
(n) and v
i
(n) are complex zero-mean white Gaus-
sian noises with variances N
0
and N
i
, respectively. Under
repetition-based amplify-and-forward cooperation, each relay
scales its received signal with the scaling factor
i
. Then, the
ith relay retransmits the scaled version of the received signal
towards the destination in the ith interval of the second phase,
i.e.,
y
i
(n) = g
i

i
r
i
(n) + w
i
(n), (2)
where w
i
(n) is a complex zero-mean white Gaussian noise
with variance N
0
. To constrain transmit power at the relay,
the scaling factor can be chosen as
i
=
_

i

0
|f
i
|
2
+N
i
, where

i
is the transmit power at relay i, such that all relays transmits
with the same power.
Assuming maximum ratio combining (MRC) at the desti-
nation, the total received signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) can be
written as

d
=
h
+
R

i=1

f
i

g
i

f
i
+
g
i
+ 1
, (3)
where
h
= |h|
2

0
/N
0
,
fi
= |f
i
|
2

0
/N
i
, and
gi
=
|g
i
|
2

i
/N
i
.
III. PERFORMANCE ANALYSIS
A. Approximate SER Expression
In this subsection, we will derive a closed-form SER
formula of AF repetition-based cooperative networks over
Nakagami-m fading channels in the high SNR regime. This
simple expression can also be used for a power allocation
strategy among the cooperative nodes, or to get an insight on
the diversity-multiplexing tradeoff of the system.
The total SNR in (3) can be upper-bounded as
u
=
h
+

R
i=1

i
, where
i
= min{
fi
,
gi
} [3], [5].
The PDF of
h
is as follows [10, Eq. (5.14)]
p
h
() =
m
m0
0

m
0
1

m0
h
(m
0
)
e

m
0

h
, (4)
where m
0
is the Nakagami-m fading parameter of h, () is
the gamma function, and
h
= E[
h
].
In [11, Eq. (6)], the PDF of
i
is derived as
p
i
() =
__
m
f
i

f
i
_
m
f
i

m
f
i
1
e

m
f
i

f
i

_
m
g
i
,
m
g
i

g
i

_
+
_
m
g
i

gi
_
mg
i

mg
i
1
e

mg
i

g
i

_
m
f
i
,
m
f
i

fi

__
/[(m
f
i
)(m
g
i
)], (5)
where (, x) is the incomplete gamma function of order
[12, Eq. (8.350)],
f
i
= E[
f
i
],
g
i
= E[
g
i
], m
f
i
and m
g
i
are
the Nakagami-m fading parameters of f
i
and g
i
, respectively.
Now, we are deriving the SER expression for the repetition-
based cooperative scheme with M-PSK signals. Averaging
over conditional SER P
e
_
R|h, {
i
}
R
i=1
_
= Q
_

u
_
, where
= 2 sin
2
_

M
_
and Q(x) = 1/

2
_

x
e
u
2
/2
du, the
average SER can be written as a (R+1)-folded integral given
by [10, Eq. (9.9)]
P
e
(R) =
_

0;(R+1)fold
P
e
_
R|h, {
i
}
R
i=1
_
p
h
(
h
) d
h
R

i=1
(p
i
(
i
) d
i
) .
(6)
The result of (6) can also be used to nd the average SER
for nonconstant modulus transmissions like M-ary amplitude
modulation (M-AM) and M-QAM as indicated in [10, Eqs.
(9.19) and (9.21)].
B. Asymptotic SER Expression
Now, we are going to derive a closed-form SER formula at
the destination, which is valid in the high SNR regime. Before
deriving the asymptotic expression, we present two lemmas.
Lemma 1: Let the Nakagami-m fading parameters of chan-
nels be integer numbers, and m
i
min{m
f
i
, m
g
i
}. The
(m
i
1)th order derivative of p
i
() with respect to at zero
is computed as

m
i
1
p
i

mi1
(0) =
m
mi
i
(m
i
1)!
(m
i
)
(m
i
,
fi
,
gi
). (7)
where (m
i
,
f
i
,
g
i
) is dened as
(m
i
,
fi
,
gi
) =
_
_
_

m
i
f
i
, if m
f
i
< m
g
i

mi
fi
+
mi
gi
, if m
fi
= m
gi

m
i
g
i
, if m
f
i
> m
g
i
(8)
Furthermore, the nth (n < m
i
1) order derivatives of p
i
()
with respect to at zero are null.
Proof: Using the denition of incomplete gamma func-
tion, we have (m
i
, 0) = (m
i
). Moreover, from [12, Eq.
(8.356)], we have
d (,x)
dx
= x
1
e
x
. Thus, applying the
chain rule for differentiating composite functions, the desired
result in (7) is obtained. The second part of the lemma can
straightforwardly be calculated using the same procedure given
above.
Lemma 2: Consider a nite set of nonnegative random
variables X = {X
0
, X
1
, . . . , X
R
} whose (m
j
1)th order
derivative PDFs p
j
, j = 0, 1, . . . , R, have nonzero values at
zero. If the random variable Y is the sum of the components
of the set X, i.e. Y =

R
j=0
X
i
, then all the derivatives of p
Y
evaluated at zero up to order 1, =

R
i=1
m
i
+ m
0
1,
are zero, while the -th order derivative is given by

(0) =
R

j=0

mj1
p
j

m
j
1
(0), (9)
Proof: As we are interested in the value at zero, we can
use the initial value theorem of Laplace transforms [13] to
arrive at (9). Since Y is the sum of R+1 independent random
variables, we have M

(s) =

R
j=0
M
j
(s), where M

(s) and
M
j
(s), j = 0, 1, . . . , R, are the Laplace transforms of p

()
and p
j
(), j = 0, 1, . . . , R, respectively.
The Laplace transform of the th order derivative of p

(),
where =

R
i=1
m
i
+m
0
1, can be computed as s

(s)
s
1
p

(0) s

2
p

2
(0)

1
p

1
(0) [13, Eq. (7.29)].
Using the initial value theorem, we have

(0) = lim
s
s
+1
M

(s), (10)
where we have used that p

(0) = =

2
p

2
(0) =

1
p

1
(0) = 0. Substituting M

(s) as its equivalent repre-

sentation based on M
j
(s), we can rewrite (10) as

(0)= lim
s
R

j=0
s
m
j
M
j
(s)=
R

j=0
lim
s
s s
m
j
1
M
j
(s). (11)
However, each of the limits in (11) is precisely corresponding
the (m
j
1)th order PDF of p
j
(), evaluated at zero, from
where we obtain (9).
The fact that this limit is not innite validates the as-
sumption of considering p

(0) = =

2
p

2
(0) =

1
p

1
(0) = 0 (using the initial value theorem,

k1
p

k1
(0) =
lim
s
s
k
M

(s), k =

R
i=1
m
i
+ m
0
1, but if the
limit with s
+1
is nite, the limit with s
k
should be 0) which
completes the proof.
Asymptotic expression for the SER of the system under
Nakagami-m fading is presented in the following theorem.
Theorem 1: Suppose the relay network consisting of R
relays with Nakagami-m fading channels, where m parameters
are integer number. The SER of this system at high SNRs can
0 5 10 15 20 25 30
10
8
10
7
10
6
10
5
10
4
10
3
10
2
10
1
10
0
SNR [dB]
S
E
R


Simulation result
Lowerbound SER based on (6)
Asymptotic SER based on (12)
Upperbound SER using (7)
R=1, m=2
R=1, m=1
R=2, m=2
Fig. 1. The average SER curves of relay networks employing repetition-
based transmission with different relay number R and Nakagami-m, and using
QPSK signals.
be calculated as
P
e

(R)

m
h
R

i=1
(m
i
,
fi
,
gi
), (12)
where (m
i
,
f
i
,
g
i
) is dened in (8) and
(R) =
c
2
+1
( + 1)!
R

j=0
(m
j
1)! m
mj
j
(m
j
)
+1

i=1
(2i 1) (13)
where =

R
i=1
m
i
+ m
0
1.
Proof: To deduce the asymptotic behavior of the average
SER (as ), we are using the approximate expression
given in [14]. When the derivatives of p

() up to -th order
are null at =0, then the SER at high SNRs can be given by
P
e

+1
i=1
(2i 1)
2( + 1)
+1
c
!

(0). (14)
Applying Lemmas 1 and 2, (14) can be rewritten as
P
e

+1
i=1
(2i 1)
2( + 1)
+1
c
!

m
0
1
p
h

m01
(0)
R

i=1

m
i
1
p
i

mi1
(0). (15)
Furthermore, using (4), it can be shown that

m
0
1
p
h
()

m
0
1
(0) =
m
m
0
0
(m
0
1)!
(m
0
)
1

m
0
h
. (16)
Combining (15)-(16) and using Lemma 1, (12) is obtained.
IV. SIMULATION RESULTS
In this section, we show numerical results of the analytical
SER for QPSK modulation. We plot the performance curves
in terms of average SER versus the transmit SNR (
0
/N
0
). It
is assumed that the relays and the destination have the same
value of noise power (N
i
= N
0
) and all channels have the
same value of m, i.e., m
h
=m
f
i
=m
g
i
. We assume the network
channels have Nakagami-m at fading with parameter m =
1, 2. The source-relays and relays-destination links assumed
to be equal, i.e., E[|f
i
|
2
] =E[|g
i
|
2
] =1, and the direct source-
destination has doubled distance of source-relays links, which
by assuming path-loss exponent 3, E[|h|
2
] =1/8. Furthermore,
we assume equal power allocation scheme, i.e.,
0
=R
i
, for
i =1, . . . , R, which is a reasonable choice [2], [4].
Fig. 1 conrms that the analytical SER expressions in Sec-
tion III for nding the average SER have similar performance
as simulation result. We consider a network with R=1, 2. One
observe that the analytical result based on (6) approximates the
simulated result with a good precision. Furthermore, we have
sketched the asymptotic average SER derived in Theorem 1. It
can be seen that the asymptotic expression well approximate
the simulations in high SNR conditions.
V. CONCLUSION
Performance analysis for AF repetition-based cooperative
networks over independent non-identical Nakagami-m fading
channels have been investigated. The approximated average
SER is obtained, when M-PSK modulation is employed.
Moreover, we have derived a simple closed-form expression
for the average SER in the high SNR regime when m is an
integer, which is valid for any number of relays. Our numerical
results show that derived SER expressions are tight bounds at
medium and high SNR values.
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