Two-relay distributed switch and stay combining

Abstract

We study a distributed version of switch-and-stay combining (DSSC) for systems that utilize two relays. In particular, four different scenarios are considered, depending on a) whether or not the source-destination channel is taken into account, and b) the type of relaying, i.e., decode and forward or amplify and forward. A performance analysis in terms of outage and bit error probability is presented, when operating over Rayleigh fading channels. Numerical results demonstrate that two-relay DSSC achieves the same diversity gain and outage performance as if the best relay is selected for each transmission slot, albeit simpler.