On the ergodic capacity of cooperative analog relaying with source adaptive transmission policies

Tight bounds for the mean achievable rates of amplify-and-forward cooperative relay networks are derived for three distinct source adaptive transmission policies in a myriad of fading environments: (i) constant power with optimal rate adaptation (ORA); (ii) optimal joint power and rate adaptation (OPRA); and (iii) fixed rate with truncated channel inversion (TCIFR). Our unified framework based on the moment-generating function (MGF) technique allows us to gain insights as to how power assignment during different transmission phases, fade distributions and dissimilar fading statistics across the distinct communication links affect the ergodic capacity, without imposing any restrictions on the fading parameters.