Performance of amplify-and-forward multihop transmission over relay clusters with different routing strategies

We consider a multihop relay network in which two terminals are communicating with each other via a number of cluster of relays. Performance of such networks depends on the routing protocols employed. In this paper, we find the expressions for the Average Symbol Error Probability (ASEP) performance of Amplify-and-Forward (AF) multihop transmission for the simplest routing protocol in which the relay transmits using the channel having the best Signal to Noise Ratio (SNR). The ASEP performance of a better protocol proposed in Gui et al. (2009) known as the adhoc protocol is also analyzed. The derived expressions for the performance are a convenient tool to analyze the performance of AF multihop transmission over relay clusters. Monte-Carlo simulations verify the correctness of the proposed formulation and are in agreement with analytical results. Furthermore, we propose new generalized protocols termed as last-nhop selection protocol, the dual path protocol, the forward-backward last-n-hop selection protocol and the forward-backward dual path protocol, to get improved ASEP performances. The ASEP performance of these proposed schemes is analysed by computer simulations. It is shown that close to optimal performance can be achieved by using the last-n-hop selection protocol and its forwardbackward variant. The complexity of the protocols is also studied. Copyright © 2014 Inderscience Enterprises Ltd.