Outage probability and BER of switch-and-stay combining in two-way relay systems with analog network coding

In this paper, switch-and-stay combining (SSC) is considered in two-way relay systems with amplify-and-forward (AF) relays, among which one is activated to assist the information exchange between two sources. We assume that the two-way relay system operates in the analog network coding (ANC) protocol where the communication can only be achieved through the active relay without the direct link. The outage probability and the average bit error rate (BER) for Rayleigh fading channels are studied. In particular, we derive closed-form lower bounds for the outage probability and the average BER, which is tight for different fading conditions. Moreover, we present asymptotic analysis for both the outage probability and the average BER at high signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) region. It is shown that SSC can achieve the full diversity order in two-way relay systems with proper switching thresholds. Numerical and simulation results are also provided to verify the theoretical study.