MIMO Relaying: Distributed TAS/MRC in Nakagami-m Fading

We develop a unified framework for the symbol error rate (SER) of distributed transmit antenna selection with receiver maximal-ratio combining (TAS/MRC) in multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) relay networks. We focus on nonregenerative relaying with N_S, N_R, and N_D antennas at the source, relay, and destination, respectively. We consider the general fading scenario of Nakagami-m fading with distinct m fading parameters in the source-to-relay and the relay-to-destination links. We present new analytical expressions for the statistics of the end-to-end signal-to-noise ratio (SNR). Specifically, we derive exact expressions and first order expansions for the cumulative distribution function and moment generating function of the end-to-end SNR. Based on these, we derive new closed-form expressions for the asymptotic SER under M-ary phase-shift keying (M-PSK) and M-ary quadrature amplitude modulation (M-QAM). Our asymptotic solutions accurately identify the diversity order and the array gain as two key design components of the network.