Performance analysis of DF relaying with optimum combining in a poisson field of interferers

The performance of optimum combining (OC) in decode-and forward (DF) relaying in the presence of a Poisson field of interferers is analyzed. An approximation for the outage probability of the OC receiver is derived by considering the temporal correlation of the interference. Despite the randomness of the number and the locations of the interferers, the OC receiver suppresses the interference at the destination node and diversity gains are achieved, provided that the relay nodes are noise limited. For single-antenna relay nodes, the end-to-end performance is vulnerable to interference at the relay nodes which is not canceled, resulting in zero diversity gains.