Abstract—This paper investigates the performance, analysis of amplify and forward (AF) cooperative networks with the best relay selection in independent and non-identical Nakagami-m channels and M-ary phase shift keying (MPSK) modulations. New closed form expressions are derived of the analytical upper bound, cumulative density function (CDF), probability density function (PDF), moment generating function (MGF), symbol error rate (SER) and outage probability (Pout). Simulation results reveal that the symbol error rate performance downgrades either the m parameter or the number of relays increases. Our simulations compared between identically and non-identical distributed links for a different number of relays. In addition, different modulation techniques are examined to show the effect of the modulation scheme which was used over Nakagami-m fading channels on the non-identically distributed cooperative networks. The obtained results proved the impact of m parameters, relay selection and modulation index on the SER performance.

Index Terms—Cooperative networks, amplify-and-forward, symbol error rate, outage probability, Nakagami-m

Cite: Ali A. Mohammed, Li Yu, and Manar Al-Kali, "Performance Analysis of Amplify-and-Forward Cooperative Networks in Non-Identically Distributed Nakagami-m Channels with Best Relaying Selection," Journal of Communications, vol. 10, no. 6, pp. 396-402, 2015. Doi: 10.12720/jcm.10.6.396-402