Closed-form bounds for multihop relayed communications in Nakagami-m fading

We present closed-form bounds for the performance of multihop transmissions with non-regenerative relays over Nakagami-m fading channels. The end-to-end signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) is formulated and upper bounded by using the inequality between harmonic and geometric mean of positive random variables (RVs). Novel closed-form expressions are derived for the moment generating function, the probability density function, and the cumulative distribution function of the product of arbitrary powers of statistically independent Gamma RVs in terms of the Meijer´s G-function. Using these theoretical results, closed-form lower bounds are obtained for the outage and average bit error probability of phase or frequency modulated signallings, while simple asymptotic expressions are also given for the bounds at high SNRs. Numerical results are compared to computer simulations, to show the tightness of the proposed bounds.