Symbol Error Analysis of Distributed Space-Time Coded Hybrid Satellite-Terrestrial Cooperative Networks

In this paper, the performance of a distributed Space-Time coded hybrid satellite-terrestrial cooperative network (DSTC-HSTCN) is investigated. In particular, we address the problem in a downlink distributed Alamouti coded satellite system with a single fixed terrestrial relay adopting amplify-and- forward protocol. By modeling the satellite- relay/destination and relay-destination links as Shadowed-Rician and Rayleigh distributions, respectively, we derive a closed-form expression for average symbol error rate (SER) with quadrature phase shift keying modulation. Simulation results verify the validity of the theoretical analysis and show the performance improvement of the hybrid satellite- terrestrial cooperative network (HSTCN).