Relay Selection with Limited and Noisy Feedback

Relay selection is a simple technique that achieves spatial diversity in cooperative relay networks. Nonetheless, relay selection algorithms generally require error-free channel state information (CSI) from all cooperating relays. Practically, CSI acquisition generates a great deal of feedback overhead that could result in significant transmission delays. In addition to this, the fed back channel information is usually corrupted by additive noise. This could lead to transmission outages if the central node selects the set of cooperating relays based on inaccurate feedback information. In this paper, we propose a relay selection algorithm that tackles the above challenges. Instead of allocating each relay a dedicated channel for feedback, all relays share a pool of feedback channels. Following that, each relay feeds back its identity only if its effective channel (source-relay-destination) exceeds a threshold. After deriving closed-form expressions for the feedback load and the achievable rate, we show that the proposed algorithm drastically reduces the feedback overhead and achieves a rate close to that obtained by selection algorithms with dedicated error-free feedback from all relays.