Effect of Channel-Estimation Error on BER Performance in Cooperative Transmission

In this paper, a framework for evaluating the bit-error-rate (BER) performance of amplify-and-forward (AF) relay-assisted cooperative transmission is provided in the presence of imperfect channel estimation. First, the AF relaying is classified into two cases - a variable gain and a fixed gain. For each case, the closed-form average BER is derived by using the moment-generating function (MGF) of the effective output SNR, which quantifies the SNR penalty due to the noisy channel estimate. Moreover, the asymptotic BER bound is also provided at a high SNR regime for the insight of our approach. In particular, the effect of the feedforward delay on informing the source-relay channel estimate as to the destination is presented in the variable-gain relay. Numerical investigation shows that the analytic result makes an exact match with the simulation, and the comparative superiority between the fixed- and variable-gain relay is discussed.

[1]  B. Gedik,et al.  Two channel estimation methods for amplify-and-forward relay networks , 2008, 2008 Canadian Conference on Electrical and Computer Engineering.

[2]  Henrick John Malik.  Exact Distribution of the Product of Independent Generalized Gamma Variables with the Same Shape Parameter , 1968 .

[3]  Mostafa Kaveh,et al.  Exact symbol error probability of a Cooperative network in a Rayleigh-fading environment , 2004, IEEE Transactions on Wireless Communications.

[4]  Gregory W. Wornell,et al.  Cooperative diversity in wireless networks: Efficient protocols and outage behavior , 2004, IEEE Transactions on Information Theory.

[5]  Mohamed-Slim Alouini,et al.  Digital Communication Over Fading Channels: A Unified Approach to Performance Analysis , 2000 .

[6]  Mazen O. Hasna,et al.  A performance study of dual-hop transmissions with fixed gain relays , 2003, 2003 IEEE International Conference on Acoustics, Speech, and Signal Processing, 2003. Proceedings. (ICASSP '03)..

[7]  Feifei Gao,et al.  On channel estimation and optimal training design for amplify and forward relay networks , 2008, IEEE Transactions on Wireless Communications.

[8]  Yu. A. Brychkov,et al.  Integrals and series , 1992 .

[9]  K. J. Ray Liu,et al.  Cooperative Communication Protocols in Wireless Networks: Performance Analysis and Optimum Power Allocation , 2008, Wirel. Pers. Commun..

[10]  Gordon L. Stüber,et al.  Channel Estimation for Amplify and Forward Relay Based Cooperation Diversity Systems , 2007, IEEE Transactions on Wireless Communications.

[11]  Andrea J. Goldsmith,et al.  Capacity and power allocation for fading MIMO channels with channel estimation error , 2006, IEEE Trans. Inf. Theory.