Non-Coherent Detection for Amplify-and-Forward Relay Systems in a Rayleigh Fading Environment

We consider about a multiple relay system operating under amplify-and-forward (AF) protocol and non-coherent modulation and demodulation. When the relays are under long-term power constraints, a near-maximum likelihood (ML) receiver and a diversity combining receiver are proposed. Both the near- ML receiver and the diversity combining receiver are expressed in simple closed forms and only rely on the second order statistics of the fading coefficients. Moreover, both of the proposed detectors outperform a non-cooperative system which only has a direct link with non-coherent ML detection in a Rayleigh fading environment. However, when the relay output is under a short-term power constraint, the ML detector derived here for the non-coherent AF relay performs the same as the non-cooperative system.