Outage performance of dual-hop fading relay channels

Abstract

Unlike wire-line networks, one primary challenge in wireless communication is the existence of fading, which may significantly attenuate the signal power seen at the receiver. This adverse effect of fading can be combated by using diversity techniques to transmit signals over multiple independent channels and coherently combining them at the receiver. In fading relay channels, cooperative communication, which is capable of creating diversity, has been an active research area over the past few decades. Whilst numerous results have been published, many fundamental questions still remain open, such as the characterization of the best possible outage performance of fading relay channels, as well as the exact outage performance of some popular relaying protocols. This thesis aims to...[ Read more ]