Node Switching Rates of Switch-and-Examine Relaying in Rician and Nakagami-m Fading

Abstract:
Recently switch-and-examine relaying was proposed as a low complexity suboptimal alternative to opportunistic relaying. The main advantage of this system is its low switching rate. This can alleviate some practical implementation issues, for example, the corruption of the data signal by switching transients, as well as the switching overheads. Exact closed-form expressions for the switching rates of switch-and-examine systems operating with two or more relays under Rician and Nakagami-m fading are derived. The explicit dependence of the switching rate on the Doppler frequency of the fading is determined. The results indicate that the Rician and Nakagami-m fading cases do not show similar behaviours in their switching rates.