Cooperative communication has been shown to provide significant increase of transmission reliability and network capacity while expanding coverage in cellular networks. #R##N#The present work is devoted to the investigation of the end-to-end performance and power allocation of a maximum-ratio-combining based regenerative multi-relay cooperative network over non-homogeneous scattering environment, which is the case in realistic wireless communication scenarios. Novel analytic expressions are derived for the end-to-end symbol-error-rate of both $M-$ary Phase-Shift Keying and $M-$ary Quadrature Amplitude Modulation over independent and non-identically distributed generalized fading channels. The offered results are expressed in closed-form involving the Lauricella function and can be readily evaluated with the aid of a proposed computational algorithm. Simple expressions are also derived for the corresponding symbol-error-rate at asymptotically high signal-to-noise ratios. The derived expressions are corroborated with respective results from computer simulations and are subsequently employed in formulating a power optimization problem that enhances the system performance under total power constraints within the multi-relay cooperative system. Furthermore, it is shown that optimum power allocation provides substantial performance gains over equal power allocation, particularly, when the source-relay and relay-destination paths are highly unbalanced.
['Mulugeta K. Fikadu', 'Paschalis C. Sofotasios', 'Mikko Valkama', 'Qimei Cui', 'Sami Muhaidat', 'George K. Karagiannidis']
Error Rate and Power Allocation Analysis of Regenerative Networks under Generalized Fading Conditions