Relay Selection for Two-Way Full Duplex Relay Networks With Amplify-and-Forward Protocol

The full duplex (FD) technique, which allows the communication node to transmit and receive signals over the same frequency band simultaneously, has the potential to double the spectral efficiency in comparison with the traditional half duplex (HD) technique. However, self-interference, leaking from the FD node´s transmission to its own reception, has the detrimental impact on the performance of FD communication. In this paper, we analyze and optimize the two-way FD relay system using amplify-and-forward protocol, when the multi-relay scenario is considered. The optimal relay selection scheme in maximizing the effective signal-to-interference and noise ratio is proposed, which significantly improves the system performance than a single relay network. Furthermore, to facilitate the comparisons with the traditional two-way HD relay, the analytical expressions of the two-way FD relay are derived in a closed form, including bit error rate (BER), ergodic capacity, and outage probability. Based on the analytical expressions, the optimal power allocation and the optimal choice of duplex mode, i.e., FD and HD, are obtained by minimizing the outage probability. Monte-Carlo simulations are fulfilled to verify the analytical expressions. The results reveal that the residual self-interference after interference suppression limits the performance of two-way FD relay: when the residual interference is small, the FD mode has lower BER/outage probability and higher ergodic capacity since it utilizes the resources effectively; otherwise, the HD mode achieves lower BER/outage probability and higher ergodic capacity since it can completely cancel the self-interference at the cost of lower resource utilization.