An Accurate Approximation to the Average Error Probability of Cooperative Diversity in Nakagami-m Fading

A new approximation to the average symbol error rate of cooperative diversity is derived for independent and non-identically distributed Nakagami-m fading channels. The new approximation has the same computational complexity as previous lower bounds in the literature, while it is much more accurate than the lower bounds, especially when the signal-to-noise ratio is small to medium. Numerical results show that the new approximation is almost graphically identical to the exact average symbol error rate for moderate values of the signal-to-noise ratio.